Mh, a website with 30M DAU or WAU is today worth 1b USD at least (if you cant monetize on 30M users, then the product has a problem?)

Much harder to monetise users in 2000, even that many.

If you sold stuff directly, handling transactions was still a pain; PayPal had to be invented, and that was only 1998.

If you ran on advertising, you had to invent the ad network and convince people to buy ad slots.