Dot-coms out of fashion, but profits still a must.

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DOT-COM HAS BECOME A DOWNRIGHT DIRTY WORD.

People being interviewed for our regular Cutting Edge feature, Dot-com Startup of the Month, have lately begun to complain: "Do you have to call us a dot-com?"

That's how painful deflated stocks, business failures and layoffs in the technology sector have become. Yet if you talk to many experts in the field, you find out that exaggerating the fall of dot-coms is merely dumb. The Internet isn't going away It's merely becoming more demanding as a business environment.

In order to make money, you have to do more than simply spend money You have to make a product or a sell a service, something that customers will be willing to buy not just download for free. And buy it at a price that will cover your costs.

That was the message of a variety of the 600 people who came to Denver's first First Tuesday, an event staged last month to match business financiers with high-tech entrepreneurs.

Somewhat similar to the Rockies Venture Club, First Tuesday holds invitation-only gatherings at bars and other venues, where liquor and business conviviality might lead to financial courtship.

This group's first turnout, on a snowy December night, and a word-of-mouth frenzy for an invitation -- organizers said they turned 800 people away -- was evidence enough that metro Denver/Boulder's Internet-based business community is vital still.

But Tom Detmer, former CEO of Denver-based Exactis.com, which was sold last spring for nearly $500 million to 24/7 Media Inc., an Internet marketing company told 200 of the group that the people...