Wealth & Money Quote by Jim Barksdale

Corporate optimism has a way of sounding like weather: sunny now, “a good strong base going forward” later. Jim Barksdale’s line is a neatly engineered piece of late-90s/early-2000s Net-economy rhetoric, the kind that turns uncertainty into inevitability through cadence and buzzwords. He isn’t selling a product so much as selling continuity.

The specific intent is reassurance. “We also provide” signals diversification: not just a core offering, but a consulting arm that can be pointed wherever the market is panicking. Consulting is positioned as the bridge between a hyped new economy and anxious legacy customers who suspect they’re already behind. “Allow people to take maximum advantage” frames the company as an enabler rather than a vendor; it flatters the client as the real actor while keeping Barksdale’s firm in the role of indispensable guide.

Subtext: the Net economy is too fast and too complex to navigate alone. If you’re not extracting “maximum” value, you’re leaving money on the table - and maybe courting obsolescence. The phrase “resonate with customers” is classic executive ventriloquism: it implies demand without committing to numbers, substituting market proof with the softer language of vibes.

Context matters: Barksdale came up in an era when “the Internet” was both a business model and a story investors wanted to hear. The quote reads like a post-bubble adaptation: less evangelism, more services, more “base.” It’s defensive confidence - a promise that whatever the Net economy does next, they’ll be there to bill for it.