F'd Companies: Spectacular Dot-Com Flameouts (Hardcover)

by Philip J. Kaplan (Author) "The First Thing I Said . . ..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York City, Third Voice, Comedy World (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
The graveyard of dot-com disasters is overflowing with grandiose ideas gone spectacularly bad, and Philip J. Kaplan's F'd Companies offers an unapologetically acerbic opinion on dozens of the most outrageous. Kaplan, a programmer turned consultant whose own online dreams began when he launched a bulletin board system for pirated game software back in 1989, pulls no punches as he bluntly dissects Web failures that remain dazzling for their pretentious plans and audacious executions. There are big names like Webvan ("a classic example of PAYING more for products than they were SELLING them for") and Go.com (a "portal to nowhere"), but most here are less well known despite similarly burning through cash like a cyber-brushfire. In language far more explicit than his softened-for-the-bookstore title, Kaplan skewers the likes of Iam.com (which lost $48 million trying to convince models and actors to post their portfolios on the Net), OnlineChoice.com (which spent $20 million to learn consumers weren't interested in group buys of electricity and other utilities), HeavenlyDoor.com (which sunk $26 million into a site peddling caskets and burial plots), and Eppraisals.com (which dropped $15 million on an effort to sell online evaluations of antiques). The result is consistently profane, frequently hilarious, and usually right on target. --Howard Rothman

From Publishers Weekly
"I'm a computer programmer," Kaplan writes. "I'm that dude at your office in the dark cubicle who nobody listens or pays attention to (especially the hotties in marketing)." Kaplan's claim to fame is FuckedCompany.com, a Web site he built over Memorial Day weekend in 2000 to serve as a forum for bad news about Internet companies. His timing a few months after the Internet bubble began to deflate was perfect, and FuckedCompany became an immediate hit. Thousands of fired or about-to-be-fired dot-commers were more than willing to share their horror stories about the collapse of one Internet company after another. He has translated the material posted on the site into a book, offering brief vignettes of the demise of more than 150 Internet ventures. His basic formula includes a description of what the company purported to do (Mercata.com "customers would use the site to band together and purchase merchandise at wholesale prices"), how much money it blew through before going bankrupt and how many people were fired ("$89 million and 100 employees were burned"). Kaplan, 25, attempts to enliven each story with humor, which is often more crude than clever. That many of the stories sound the same is not Kaplan's fault, as most really are: someone comes up with an idea, finds a venture capitalist willing to pour funding into the company despite the flimsiest of business plans, and then goes broke when the money dries up. Although he tries, Kaplan delivers little more than an elegy for the Industry Standard, Pets.com, Contentville.com, Flooz.com, Bid.com and Kozmo.com, not to mention Zing.com, ProcessTree.com and MetalSpectrum.com.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1st edition (April 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743228626
• ISBN-13: 978-0743228626
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (106 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #628,664 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Absolute Garbage, April 22, 2002

By	Automatt (California, United States) - See all my reviews

This is basically a text dump of a bunch of stuff you can get on the website anyway... it is not a particularly good read, either. Stay away.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Just plain bad!, April 21, 2002

By A Customer

If you must read.. read in the book store and toss it on your way out.

Don't expect King Lear here. This book is so bad that the fact that it is selling well scares me. Are we as Americans really that stupid or are we just a country of skate board riding baboons?

Avoid this book! It is written by the someone profoundly intent on making money on cheese and sleaze. Don't look for any vestiges of class here. In 10 years America will be well into the slippery slope down to ignorance and apathy.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Perfect for its intended use...., April 30, 2002

By	John Kosh Jr. (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews

First, this book is not to be taken too seriously. It is a tongue and cheek look at some of the more infamous dot.com flameouts in the last few years. If you love the website, then you will enjoy this book, as I did. However, if you are looking for an in depth examination of the tragic woes that hit the dot.com world, this is not your book. It is the often funny musings and rantings of man who saw the coming demise of the Internet Bubble while the New York brokerages were still puffing away about a never-ending new economy in their attempt to peddled extremely over priced stocks. A harbinger of doom, perhaps?

Second, this book is a quick and easy read, perfect for commuters or those who enjoy reading during television commercials. Segments of the book, concerning a particular company, tend to be no longer than a few paragraphs each.

Finally, this book does contain vast amounts of toilet humor, but again, any regular visitor to the website would expect nothing less from Pud, the author. Taken with a grain of salt, F'd Companies makes a nice afternoon appetizer.