F'd Companies

Alex Moskalyuk writes "Philip J. Kaplan's F'd Companies is a compilation of famous and not so well-publicized dot-com flameouts. Most of the companies that are described in the book do not exist today, for some others the domain names are being used for similar businesses, but the original management and business plans are gone. Even though F'd Companies presents several chapters in the table of contents, it's better viewed just as compilation of dot-com mishaps, with about one or two pages dedicated to each company." Read on for more Schadenfreude. F'd Companies author Philip J. Kaplan pages 224 publisher Simon & Schuster rating 8/10 reviewer Alex Moskalyuk ISBN 0743228626 summary Spectacular dot-com flameouts

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.

Comments

Insights?

[PhysicsGenius]

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*.

Re:Insights?

[Anne_Nonymous]

Insights? No. However, the book probably preserves the zeitgeist of the bubble for more than a few Gen-Xers. It's good to be reminded of our past follies every so often.

Too bad the author is no good

[erf]

I've read it. It's amusing. However, Philip Kaplan's writing is flat out the worst part of the book.

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 /. posters bought into) is deserving of much more thought and research than went into this little one off, quick buck, mindless catalog of failures.

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.

Re:Too bad the author is no good

[Anonvmous Coward]

"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."

Based on the excerpt provided on /., I doubt the guy really knew a whole lot what he was talking about. The Calender .COM example stuck with me. "It could have been done with a script". Not true. First you need people to build something on that level, then you need people to maintain the servers and fix problems that go wrong, then you need people working on making it better and better so that they don't lose to things like Exchange.

I have no doubt that they were over-capitalized, that they could have done more with less. But let's be realistic, the guy claimed they could have done with a couple of people and a script. No. What probably really happened was a good chunk of the 70 people there were sales people making cold calls to get companies to try out their calender stuff. If they could get whole corps to sign on, they'd instantly have a big account with lots of people using it. Doesn't sound so mindless now does it?

The reality is that if they'd gone with a more Google-esque approach, they'd probably have done better for themselves. But who knew that then? They had 20 mil to spend on it and they probably felt they needed to start big and quickly rake in the customers to maintain that.

I definitely won't be buying that book. I don't think the guy's capable of interesting insight into a .BOM. I already read the list off the top 100 business failures in 2000, so why pay for the extended version?

What is it going to take

[Boss, Pointy Haired]

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.

uhhh

[Hobophile]

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.

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.

Re:uhhh

[halftrack]

The dotcoms didn't sell websites for millions of dollars (I guess they wouldn't have gone under then,) but got millions of dollars from investors to create a website that were to sell/promote a service. The website was the business and the dotcoms went out because they blew millions on websites that weren't worth more than a few thousands, which is what businesses like the author charge.

The author chose bad wording, but still ... the point's there.

More retro reviews?

[Animats]

What's going on at Slashdot? This book was published in April 2002, and it was a bit dated even then.

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.

Good-quality sarcasm = penises and pr0n?

[aCheshireCat]

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.

Re:Basically...

[jmertic]

The whole era taught us (again), that there truely is no thing as a free lunch. A successful internet company actually has to have a non-internet side of it to be successful, with some exceptions ( namely Ebay, Yahoo, Google to name a few ). You can't just start a internet business in your basement and expect the money to come rolling in.

You also have to be able to sell something online that someone would likely buy thru that medium. For example, selling cars and furniture online doesn't work as well as going to the car dealership or the furniture store; it's just not something that we can be comfortable with. And back then, everyone tried to find a way to sell everything possible online; some found success ( ex. books/videos/CDs with Amazon, CDnow, etc ) and some realized it just couldn't be done easily or at all.

This can be extending to advertisement space ( ie banner ads, popups ). This works well outside of the internet ( TV/radio ads, billboards ), but it's value was overrated during the .com era. Paying a website to refer someone to some other website was predicated on the idea of that person actually buying something there, which never really panned out as they hoped (ie Web Site Visitor != Web Site Customer). Then to make things worse, a company solely built around income from such referrals (AllAdvantage.com) was just a ticking timebomb, especially when people figured out the cheats ( I know I did )

Today companies with a large online presence typically have a similarly sized complimenting offline presence. For example, you can go to an Apple store or dealer and buy and iBook, or goto the Apple Online Store and buy one. It seems to be the best bet.

the anti-f'ed up company

[ACK!!]

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.