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F'd Companies
Everyone who's visited the author's Web site at least once has probably noticed Kaplan's style of writing -- raunchy humor abundantly supplemented with free use of four-letter words, which is then mingled with frequent references to the author's male organ and Internet pr0n industry. Not that the book loses its charm because of it -- F'd Companies would probably make a poor choice for a kid's present, but after getting used to Kaplan's style of writing the obscenities and euphemisms add hilarity to otherwise dry management text. Here's Kaplan's contemplation on the value of domain name Wapit.com (now defunct):
The company had a cool name though. I love to wapit in the morning when I first wake up with my stiffy, wapit in the stall of the men's bathroom at lunchtime, and wapit before I go to sleep.
The book is full of references to defunct companies, and reader can easily skip the chapters if some companies sound more interesting than others. The chapter names are well-chosen and represent the author's style well. "$100 SHOPPING SPREE IF YOU READ THIS CHAPTER" talks about the numerous get-paid-for-browsing-the-Internet companies, the industry that was pioneered by AllAdvantage.com and supported later by numerous copycats. "Portals to nowhere" talks about such huge money-burners as Go.com and QuePasa.com. The chapter for 'miscellaneous' companies that did not fit any other chapter is titled "I've no fucking clue."
If you look for objective analysis, or used to work for some of the companies mentioned in the book, do not buy it if you consider yourself a sensitive person. Kaplan disparaging remarks are what makes this book a worthy read. Here are some of the selected quotes regarding bankrupt dot-coms.
IHarvest.com: "I don't think I've ever seen a more useless company than iHarvest.com. Actually, I am sure of it. Such a waste."
CalendarCentral.com: "Why would an application service provider like CalendarCentral.com, a site that provides shared, online calendars for group scheduling, go out of business? Microsoft Outlook/Exchange you say? [description of business model that never worked follows] Another one assimilated by the Borg... and Microsoft probably didn't even notice."
OnlineChoice.com: "And this one cost investors around $20 million and employed seventy people. Seventy people. This business, this WEBSITE, could have been run by a SCRIPT. Zero employees. Okay, MAYBE a couple of people to broker deals with suppliers."
SwapIt.com: "So let me get this straight: 1) I send them a CD. 2) They give me useless "SwapIt Bucks." 3) They go out of business. 4) I get nothing. Great, sign me up! [...] I believe this is the only dotcom that actually had people SENDING them product and they STILL couldn't stay in business."
Being a Web developer, Kaplan just goes into fits when talking about the high-cost Web site development. He admits that some sites might be more demanding than others, but any 6- or 7- digit number and above, in his opinion, is just plain ridiculous. Talking about Rx.com, Kaplan is blunt: "This company had $350 million to build a fucking website and market it a little. I mean, if they spent $1 million a year, they could have been around for hundred of years without a single sale." In a two-page rant about high-cost developer MarchFirst.com, Kaplan admits: "Anyway, building websites is relatively easy. That's not to say that everyone can do it, nor that anyone would be interested in learning how. [...] Generally, it's not brain surgery (which I'm assuming is kinda tricky). [...] I'm an idiot and even I was able to build a successful small business building websites. Thing is, we didn't charge millions to build a five-minute CGI email form. That's why we're still around." (Kaplan's agency is PK Interactive.)
By now you should get a feel of the book. It's easy to read, and is sometimes just hilarious, as Philip Kaplan has good-quality sarcasm almost in every sentence. The book would be of interest to tech types, especially those who had been involved in dot-com craze. For serious business types it provides valuable lessons on how not to run a new business. Kaplan's book is a valuable addition to the history of the Internet economy.
You can purchase F'd Companies from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Its seems that most online companies are F'd.... I could have written this book in 1 paragraph =P
isn't this book about a year old now?
This would probably be a fun read, but I can't imagine "serious business types" gaining any insights. Real business people already know you have to have a good plan and a product to make money. Very few of these failed dotcoms had either one and almost none of them were run by anybody with any business sense. Most of them were a couple of college dropouts with a meager knowledge of web site "design" *cough*slashdot*cough*.
I've read it. It's amusing. However, Philip Kaplan's writing is flat out the worst part of the book.
/. posters bought into) is deserving of much more thought and research than went into this little one off, quick buck, mindless catalog of failures.
How many times can you read about a company and have the comments boil down to "they were dumb, they went out of business"? That's pretty much the outer limits of Kaplan's critical and analytic skills. The whole dot-com boom & bust phenomena (which so many
The book gets real dull. Fortunately it's short. Kaplan, next time get a ghostwriter. Heck, how about an interview with megalomaniac ESR on his old essay "musings on sudden wealth" now that VA Linux has essentially gone tits up.
to restore confidence?
As a start-up today, one of the biggest hurdles is getting a potential customer to take you seriously.
Even if you are a sensible start-up, funded out of your own pocket - and even profitable on a small scale - you are tarred with the same brush as the multi-million dollar collapses of two years ago.
I have to work very hard to convince a potential customer that i'll still be here in 12 months time, and it takes human intervention - i've not yet figured out how to do it through the website.
Great, so in a few years when my daughter starts reading books that don't have puppies named spot in them she will come to me and ask me why I was stupid enough to move to the bay during the Dot Com boom. Colin
I'm sorry, but if companies are paying millions of dollars for a 5 minute CGI email script, and you decide your web design business is only going to charge a few hundred, then I have a hard time deciding who's the bigger fool here: the dotcom, or Philip "I'm an idiot" Kaplan.
Charge what the market will bear and don't leave money on the table. Sales and Marketing 101.
For a while, Slashdot had a spate of duplicate stories, angering many readers who realized that the "editorial staff" wasn't reading their own output. Now there's this rash of outdated book reviews.
When a company starts fucking up on the basics, they're usually doomed.
How do you think they got their funding? Not many college droupouts have access to the kinds of resources that VC firms offered a lot of these lads... So, I think you may be off the mark in how "serious" "serious" business types actually are.
I always trust a reviewer who equivocates four-letter words, penises, and pr0n with quality sarcasm because he provably still wapits to the lingerie section of the Sears catalog.
Anyhow, F'd Companies was funny maybe in 2000 - 2001. This book is Kaplan's sad attempt to use every last scrap of the buffalo.
I am a virus, put me in your
Um, why is Slashdot reviewing a book that came out in April 2002?
In 2001 FC was a funny read, considering most of us either worked for, or knew people who worked for some of the firms in the book.
Haven't been many flameouts of hugely funded wesellfuckall.com companies lately, so FC has turned into a rather nasty insult site, short on content. The book is nowhere near as fun to read as the site anyway.
So, why a review of a ten month old book?
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
The dot commers are amazing. I was inspired to look up an old company I use to work for. They employed about 12 people total.
They had three sales people, three support people, on tester, one secretary, three programmers. One of the programmers doubled as their sysadmin. The support staff had to work on bugs for Q&A in their time between calls. Advanced Productivity software literally had clients that were some of the biggest lawfirms around.
They made a product. They sold a product. They made money.
The guys who started the thing took out personal loans to keep it going for awhile. He passed out profits back to the employees when times were good. Honestly, if there was a place to be promoted to or a position open when I was ready to go on I probably would have never left.
Small companies can survive in the IT world. They just have to have half a clue in their heads to do it.
Fill a niche, concetrate and expand along the niche not outside it, keep employee and overhead costs low (their building was nothing grand but I had my own office).
This is basic business stuff that many companies still have no concept of.
ACK
What are you kidding me? .com's are the stellar leaders in the innovative digital distribution of adult entertainment worldwide. No nobody can beat them at this game.
It's called "Customer Relations" and "Repeat Business". You might want to look into it.
As the old saying goes, just because you *can* do something, doesn't mean you *should*...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My ol' company was in there, and for interest to slashdot users, it was an opensourced perl based system.
.com, the preasure to repay investor's money with a lucritive IPO gave too little time to the proper development of the software, too high a credence to marketing the company and the need for some 'star' founders put too little expierence in the management of the company.
.coms back in 99-00 knows, all of that was an impossibility at that time.
The problem with Kaplan's review, is that he really just wrote based on that one sentance explanation. After reading that I put the book down. I presume Kaplan had a list made with name and one sentance discription and he just wrote a blurb based on that. There was no research into each company, I'm not sure by reading that you get any insight into each company's workings and problems. A better book, would be to allow an simpathetic former employee write an obituary, then include some of the comments from his website when the company went under to retort and bring some feeling back into it.
Zelerate died for a number of reasons, the least being the capability of the opensourced model to sustain business. Our problems were basically the same as every other
If we just developed, found patient beta company's to develop for, followed the traditional alpha-beta-production timelines, AND got our heads out of the clouds, we just might be still around. But, as anyone who worked in or around
What exactly is "sick" about the name Jamcracker? It's not like the name was "Crack Jammer" (and even that does not really mean anything).
cpeterso