Overhyped, Unprofitable Dot Coms Going Public? Bubble? What Bubble?
from the we've-seen-this-before dept
John Battelle may be right in saying that the talk of a new bubble is overblown, as many of the new firms seem to be doing things in a way that's more sustainable. However, that's certainly not true of all of these firms. We're suddenly seeing a lot of firms that don't have a real business model or any real competitive advantage taking on tons of VC money -- but the real bubble warning signs may be coming in another area: unprofitable firms going public. And, here they come. We chronicled the history (overhyped internet retailer with somewhat infamous founder/CEO, goes public in the boom, goes back private after same founder buys out the shares after the bubble burst using his gains from the initial IPO) of Buy.com earlier this year when they announced plans to go public again, and now it looks like it's finally about to happen. The company filed to go public today, even though it's still unprofitable. Wall Street is waking up to tech IPOs again...
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Failure
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Re: Failure
I also think its $400+ stock price keeps n00bs out of it anyway -- which is how it should be.
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Then you look at Verisign who purchased Weblogs for a cool 2.3 million USD. Now that is not half a billion but it is still overvalued.
Makes me wonder what my company is worth... http://www.easy-visa-usa.com :)
David
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Wow.. I could sit on a street corner and buy email addresses off of people for a buck a pop.. Who the hell thought that was a good idea?
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i have no issue with GOOG having a much higher valuation than TimeWarner. one is a growing company and one is arguably a shrinking one. TW has had a dead business in AOL, major legal liabilities, accounting issues, decay in traditional media and huge overhead.
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