We officially launched Streetplay.com on March 21, 1999, the first day of spring. With only a couple of weeks of experience on the net our expectations are still somewhat modest. We figure that in a year the site should be worth about a billion dollars.

We had to go virtual because let's face it, the Internet is the ultimate extension of the American Dream. We always heard that if you had a great idea, pursue it and you might get rich. Now in "Internet time" you can get really, really rich, really, really quick. Of course there are some quirky aspects. Success used to be measured by how good you were at making money using other people's money. On the Internet, success appears to be how good you are at losing other peoples money. The more money you can lose the more you are worth.

At Streetplay.com, we understand these new economics, and believe the biggest barrier between today's site and our vision of being worth a billion dollars in one year, is our ability to lose money. Essentially, our short term barrier is that we are not losing money fast enough. We've only been losing money at the rate to pay for the site (<$100 per month). Our goal is to double the amount of money lost per month, every month. By the end of the year, this would mean that we'd be losing almost $100,000 every 30 days, clearly the mark of a billion dollar company.

This will not be easy, but rest assured that our financial staff is actively pursuing creative new approaches to reach this goal. While we are currently somewhat limited by our lack of capital (sorry, we are not accepting any financial partners at this point), our basic approach will be to lose money more quickly, by giving it away.

Our focus will be to give money away to two distinct groups:

• The people investing in the site
• Good causes, somewhat related to what we are doing

Since we are not accepting any financial investments now, we will consider the people who contribute stories, photos and ideas to be our investors, and we'll give away money away to them in the form of prizes and contributions.

Of course we will still have to pay for hardware/software support to maintain the site. Luckily as the site gets bigger, these costs naturally grow. Unfortunately at this time, we do not have a real staff, and this presents a challenge to our goal of losing money. Having to pay people is an important part of spending. Still at his time we will have to rely on volunteers, as opposed to professional help, to help up achieve our money losing goals. Perhaps as we get bigger, we will hire staff and have an even better chance at reaching our financial vision.

Your suggestions: tell us how we can lose more money, more quickly.

A serious note about losing money and being rich.