Just reading through Boo Hoo, a book written in 2001, illustrating the largesse of e-commerce startup Boo.com and how they spent $170m in less than two years most of it just to launch their first website. Also watched startup.com a few years ago (https://youtu.be/ibuiUXOTE4M). As a two time startup founder (post-2000), I find these stories fascinating. Just wondering what differentiated those that succeeded / survived from those that failed ? Some of the things seem ludicrous these days like: - going IPO just after product launch - outsourcing most of the tech development to over a dozen companies without proper version control - going big from day 1 with TV commercials and multi country offices, and feature creep. - hiring like crazy without any real revenue even for positions like customer support (Boo.com hired like 30 customer support staff in London before even launching) - BD and managing consultant guys managing R&D I realize that the concept of going lean was only a lesson drawn much later, but I'm curious if it's that what distinguished some of the winners (like Amazon) or was it just pure luck? Would love to hear some stories.
Invested in one venture with 50% of my savings. Sold it to another company for a neat profit. Invested all that money (roughly $5 mil back then) into a 2nd venture by a Kansas based Indian guy (talked into it by a common friend), along with 4 other people, lost everything and the indian chap is absconding since. Friend who talked me into investing ended up taking his own life, he lost all his savings and investments in this. Moral of the story: never invest in IT ventures with co-founders who are from the southern part of india (I know I'm gonna get hate for this, but I've seen a series of such things happen repeatedly with others, with chaps from the same regions of india)
I worked for a DSL network provider (provided DSL to ISPs who resold to consumers). This was still the age of small mom & pop ISPs. It was amazing to see the ripple affect in the market. People were losing jobs, cancelling their internet service in mass, causing these small ISPs to go out of business so the company I worked for lost revenue and layed everyone off en mass in a matter of weeks. The real nail in that company's coffin was a merger deal with Verizon who backed out at the last minute.
What were causing people to cancel their Internet?
I worked for that company, too!! Bay Area? Those were the days... Until they were no longer the days.
Sitting across the table from one of the richest three men in the world explaining where his $500M went... In retrospect, actually kind of a funny story, but was a horrible day at the time.
Small IT team working for facilities. Corporate IT wouldn't give us access to the data center to put in our server. They didn't realise our facilities coded badges opened any door. We put out server in there and a fridge full of beer. Which they could see but couldn't access. Periodically we would swap it out for a different beer so that they knew we were in and out all the time. Really pissed them off because they didn't know how we were doing it.
It was fun as hell, I miss it. Will likely never see anything like it again. Money was meaningless, parties were epic, execution was optional. I bought a boat.
^^winner
Not even close. Think of it this way, goog since ipo is up roughly 10,000%? Msft was up 65,000% by '99. Everyone was overnight rich and the future seemed infinite for most. Today people are focused on real business outcomes, things like diversity, and PR. In the 90s you could raise 10m with a 10 slide powerpoint and later that night hit a party with a list performers, tons of "refreshments" at some ceo of terrible.coms house and raise another 1m. Another example, I bought my first porsche from the office admin. It was only 2 months old but she decided she wanted a different color. It's hard to describe but it's not even close to today. One piece of advice: be saving for the rainy day. You party during the boom but get rich during the recession :)
I was an intern. Salary plus free apartment plus free rental car plus stock options. As I was leaving that August of 2000 was in a meeting where I was told the numbers for the quarter were horrible. Same is happening in the crypto currency market right now.
I was in high school and a summer intern at a .com in San Francisco. My last day was a Friday, but they said I can still come to the company picnic on Saturday. I showed up for the picnic/party. No one was there. I try calling everyone I knew. No answer. So I went home. Later found out they failed to get the next round of funding. So instead of the party, they just shut down the business. Drank and smoked for the first time that summer at company parties. Remember I was in high school.
I did, working in tech, lost everything after it burst, it was a fun time though.
How did you lose everything? You'd still have had some money in the bank, right? Or did you invest entirely in stocks ?
Good thread. I was an intern at an Amazon pre-cursor and learned that the money came from old rich dudes who had no idea what they were getting into. Hearing "Internet sales" and "website" made them go bonkers to blow their dough on young kids with unproven vision.
Lots of stories, though a few would out me, but some of my favorite anecdotes include: 1) nearly being fired for asking my dot-com CEO if we were ever going to evaluate our projects for strategic purpose/ROI instead of just 'doing' everything; 2) going to the same company's holiday party the day after the first big round of layoffs, and figuring out how many salaries could have been covered by the ice sculpture budget. Oh, and FuckedCompany was a great site - the day my company appeared there was ironically celebrated. I could go on and on...
Seems like another story of wrong people raising a whole lot of money for the wrong sort of reasons.
Ah, good old FuckedCompany. Wonder what Pud is up to...