Free email: what a great idea. Juno was the first to offer it for the masses, but it didn't own the idea for long. Once the Internet took hold, everyone wanted it. Hotmail, Four11, and Who Where quickly jumped into the Web-based free email market. This isn't unique. High tech startups from Gigabit Ethernet to online drugstores arose and almost immediately faced stiff competition from like-minded entrepreneurs. "We'll typically see 3 to 20 companies in a given category emerge within three to eight weeks of each other. It's the Internet's version of the Big Bang," says Jennifer Fonstad, a venture capitalist at Draper Fisher Jurvetson in Redwood City, California.
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