A Profitable Dot Com?

from the really? dept

Tue, Dec 18th 2001 1:51am — Mike Masnick

A NY Times article about how eUniverse is a profitable dot com run by a scrappy young entrepreneur without much investment. The details of the story are a little sketchy, and it really sounds like he has moved from one scam to the next to keep bringing in more money. Anyone who plans to open a site to sell ink toner cartridges (the subject of so many spam messages) has to be questionable in my book. This is a guy who opened up an "investment" bank in his dorm room and through unsolicited pitches convinced companies to hire him to raise money for them. While I admire the resourcefulness, he hasn't done much to build any sort of sustainable business, and instead relies on his ability to be one step ahead of where the money might be. So far, he's been very good at it, but sooner or later those things have a way of catching up.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

2 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Ed, 18 Dec 2001 @ 9:15am

Profitable?
Total net income for 2001: $-41 million. Note the minus sign. By whose definition is this profitable?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Mike (profile), 18 Dec 2001 @ 9:34am
  
  Re: Profitable?
  That would be the NY Times definition, apparently.
  
  Though, actually, the -$41 million is for the financial year that ended in March (so really it's from 2000). The financials I see show that in the last two quarters, they did officially eke out minimal profits (not that I believe financial statements...)
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]