It was 1998 and internet mania was in full swing. Fueled by the fear of missing out on the next big e-thing, freewheeling venture capitalists and speculators poured money into companies that appeared only tangentially internet-related. Entrepreneurs responded in kind, many going so far as to add “.com” or some techy sounding prefix like “e-“ or “net-“ to their company's name in the hopes of attracting attention from internet-obsessed investors.
Some went even further. In 1998, CEO Alan Meckler of the niche magazine publishing company MecklerMedia renamed the firm “Internet.com Corp.” It worked. When the company went public in June 1999, shares were trading at $14. By December 1999, at the height of the dot-com bubble, shares of Internet.com had spiked to $72.25. All sorts of dot-com companies, no matter how tenuous their connection to the internet, continued to surge in value in the eyes of Wall Street—until the bubble burst in early March 2000.
Curiously, the past decade has seen a similar mania, but this time it's tech companies all the way down. No matter the actual business of the company at hand, it's probably calling itself a tech company and reaping the rewards of that sweet, sweet VC cash.
Read Full Article »