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The 20 Worst Venture Capital Investments of All Time

14 points by chengmi 19y ago

iamelgringo 19y ago
Notice how many of these were in the last bubble. Notice how much VC money these people burned through. These companies even got private people--Whoopi Goldberg--and corporations like Coca Cola to invest millions in these startups. I'd bet you could add up all of the VC money given to web 2.0 startups for the last 4-5 years, and it wouldn't add up to the money given to cue-cat + Kozmo + Webvan. ($1.23 billion) You've got to be kidding me! We could start 1000 startups for that kind of money and have plenty left over to buy a small carribean island to move to and run our startups from while drinking fruity drinks and getting massages. I just don't get the hoopla of bubble 2.0. Nothing to see folks, just keep moving along and keep working on your startups.
- run4yourlives 19y ago
  Um, did you miss the whole Microsoft giving piles of cash to Facebook?
  - emmett 19y ago
    Facebook has 50 million active users, is the 7th largest website online according to Alexa, and is growing rapidly. Many of these startups failed to even launch, and the ones that did never got traction or had completely unsustainable business models.
    - marvin 19y ago
      And besides, the Facebook deal was "only" 200 million dollars. If Facebook tanks tomorrow, that is a small loss for a large business event. As others have pointed out, the numbers today are small by 1999-standards.
far33d 19y ago
I recently read some parts of the FuckedCompany book, which has most of these, as well as many many more amazing bubble flameouts. It's not very well written but a quick and fun read.
dfranke 19y ago
All of these are just from the late '90s and after. What about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_sea_bubble http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_sea_bubble
downer 19y ago
Pets.com: Once backed with $50 million by Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Bowman Capital, and Amazon.com Inc. Can I get $50k from one of those?
mynameishere 19y ago
How depressing that webvan.com is owned by a vanilla domain parker. It's actually not that bad of an idea--selling groceries to UMC city people. They just executed badly.

14 points by chengmi 19y ago

Notice how many of these were in the last bubble. Notice how much VC money these people burned through. These companies even got private people--Whoopi Goldberg--and corporations like Coca Cola to invest millions in these startups. I'd bet you could add up all of the VC money given to web 2.0 startups for the last 4-5 years, and it wouldn't add up to the money given to cue-cat + Kozmo + Webvan. ($1.23 billion) You've got to be kidding me! We could start 1000 startups for that kind of money and have plenty left over to buy a small carribean island to move to and run our startups from while drinking fruity drinks and getting massages. I just don't get the hoopla of bubble 2.0. Nothing to see folks, just keep moving along and keep working on your startups.

run4yourlives 19y ago
Um, did you miss the whole Microsoft giving piles of cash to Facebook?
- emmett 19y ago
  Facebook has 50 million active users, is the 7th largest website online according to Alexa, and is growing rapidly. Many of these startups failed to even launch, and the ones that did never got traction or had completely unsustainable business models.
  - marvin 19y ago
    And besides, the Facebook deal was "only" 200 million dollars. If Facebook tanks tomorrow, that is a small loss for a large business event. As others have pointed out, the numbers today are small by 1999-standards.

far33d 19y ago

I recently read some parts of the FuckedCompany book, which has most of these, as well as many many more amazing bubble flameouts. It's not very well written but a quick and fun read.

dfranke 19y ago

All of these are just from the late '90s and after. What about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_sea_bubble http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_sea_bubble

downer 19y ago

Pets.com: Once backed with $50 million by Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Bowman Capital, and Amazon.com Inc. Can I get $50k from one of those?

mynameishere 19y ago

How depressing that webvan.com is owned by a vanilla domain parker. It's actually not that bad of an idea--selling groceries to UMC city people. They just executed badly.