We all know the story — it’s the late 90’s, lots of tech company stock prices are going through the roof while the companies themselves are doing nothing but spending tons of “free” venture capital money, our web 2.0 development company, Intechnic, is starting out (well maybe not everyone knew that part of the story), when eventually that bubble crashed. Let’s lighten up for a moment and somehow forget about the massive amounts of wealth that disappeared and jobs lost (many of these people were very talented and turned out ok anyway) and take a look at some of these companies’ funny ideas. Yes, hindsight is indeed 20/20…
1) Freeinternet.com - according to Wikipedia, this company lost $19 million bucks on $1 million in revenue, not surprsing considering that they’re giving away internet access for free. I guess the ads never really took?
2) Boo.com - those of you wondering why venture capital money is so hard to come by…Boo.com had a perfectly legitimate plan, to sell apparel online. There are lots of profitable websites doing that today. Boo.com, however, managed to burn through $135 million in venture capital dollars in about a year and a half, check it out on Wikipedia.
3) There’s one more I remember reading about, but I’m sorry I can’t remember the name. They advertised delivering anything anywhere. Go online, say you want a snickers and it’ll be at your door. It didn’t take long before millions in investor funds didn’t alleviate that fact that delivering a single candy bar halfway across town doesn’t add up.
4) Intechnic Corporation…oh wait, we’re definitely still here.
