Worst dot com busts?

[cjgallen]

1. Get in on the IPO
2. Sell Sell Sell
3. Watch Company Collapse
4. Profit/Laughs

 

[Ketteringo]

he should start this company that sells items for 5-10x their MSRP and offer a mail in rebate on them that makes them free, then you will be able to float huge amounts of capital and make a killing on the interest!

 

[Armitage]

A guy I vaguely knew left the air force (officer) at the height of the tech boom to work on some kind of high school sports site. They wanted to be the "ESPN of High Scool Sports". Needless to say, it busted - not sure it even made it off the ground.

1. There is know way they could have the staff to cover the events themselves - there's gotta be thousands of high schools.
2. The events are generally already well covered by local media - at best they'd have to pay for the coverage from them.
3. People are generally only interested in their local teams - and they can get their news from local media, their kids, or just going to the game.
4. Even in the local market the fraction of people that actually follow H.S. sports is probably relatively small.
5. They thought they could get "volunteer" writers to cover the stuff. If these volunteer writers exist (and they probably do, but likely only at a fraction of the schools) why not publish locally via the school website/paper, other local papers, or their own website. What's in it to give their work to a national for-profit.
6. They expected to make money by ad revenue and subscriptions. Would you subscribe? - see points 2, 3, 4 above.

 

[trmiv]

Does his idea have an actual way of creating revenue? Does it provide a product or service that is of actual value to people that they would be willing to pay for it? If the answer is no, he shouldn't even bother. There were a lot of dotcoms that went bust because when it came down to it, they really didn't do or provide anything that people were willing to pay for.