10 biggest dot.com flops – Lessons learned? And my stories

CNN has an interesting story, “10 biggest dot.com flops“.

For the 10th anniversary of the Nasdaq’s all-time high, CNNMoney.com took a look at the biggest busts of the dot.com bubble.

Pets.com (1 of 10)

The Pets.com sock puppet has become synonymous with the dot.com bust.

The pet food and supplies company is perhaps the most recognized flop from the dot.com bubble because of its famous marketing campaign. Pets.com ran ads of a dog sock puppet interviewing people on the street. The mascot appeared in a Super Bowl commercial and even got its own balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in 1999.

Important lessons for our generation to learn to recognize what Dutch people learned from their over-exaggerated love of tulip.

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P.S. At the time of the bubble, I bought some put options and made some money. I like to say if I had held the put options till their maturities, I could have used the capital gain to put a nice downpayment on a house or even bought a small house with cash. Of course, if I did, I might have thought that I was “very smart” and might have lost all my money in the years since. :)

Post-postscript – My little story: Before the bubble burst, someone approached me and want to buy the domain name ideasRevolution.com and I knew I could have sold the name for a few thousand dollars. But I had already put in lots of effort and care in creating the brand/Lovemark, so I didn’t sell out. And I am very glad that I still own ideasRevolution.com today and continue to build it as a brand/Lovemark.

P.P.P.S. I think the company that wasn’t able to buy my domain name eventually operated under ideas.com for a few years before it went out of business.