Dot-com & internet
The bubble of 1995–2001 funded businesses that had never earned a dollar of profit, and a few that never would. Some of the ideas were right and a decade early. Others outlived the crash and are still here, much smaller than they were.
Post-mortems in Dot-com & internet
Pets.com
1998 – 2000
The most famous mascot of the dot-com era, Amazon as its biggest shareholder, and a Super Bowl ad. It never sold a quarter’s goods for more than they cost to deliver.
Webvan
1996 – 2001
Raised more than $1.2 billion, built warehouses for millions of orders, and stopped delivering on a Monday in July 2001.
Groupon
2008 – present
Still open, still listed, and a fraction of its former size. The daily deal that turned down Google now sells with about a seventh of the staff and under a third of the customers it had at its peak.
AOL
1985 – present
It mailed America a free trial, charged $19.95 a month for the internet and used its share price to buy Time Warner. Broadband made the product unnecessary. The name is on its fifth owner.
Kozmo.com
1998 – 2001
Orange-jacketed couriers brought New Yorkers a video and a pint of ice cream in under an hour, free, with no minimum. Its own IPO filing shows that in late 1999 delivery staff cost more per order than the order brought in.
eToys
1997 – 2001
An Idealab start-up that sold toys online from 1997. Its IPO was valued at $7.78 billion at the first day’s close. It spent more on marketing than it took in gross profit, missed its last Christmas forecast by almost half, and shut down in March 2001.
theglobe.com
1995 – 2001
Two Cornell students built a site for free home pages and chat. Its shares rose 606% on their first day of trading in 1998. Less than three years later the site was switched off.