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3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (106 customer reviews)

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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: #835,496 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
The First Thing I Said . . . Read the first page

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York City, Third Voice, Comedy World, Fast Company, Sticky Networks, Best Buy, The Industry Standard, United States, Imagine Media, Think New Ideas

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Citations (learn more)

5 books cite this book:

JSTOR: A History by Roger C. Schonfeld in Front Matter, and Back Matter
Inside the Cult of Kibu: And Other Tales of the Millennial Gold Rush by Lori Gottlieb on page 271
In the Company of Owners: The Truth about Stock Options (And Why Every Employee Should Have Them) by Joseph Blasi in Back Matter
How to Sell Anything on eBay . . . and Make a Fortune! by Dennis Prince on page 8
No-Collar: The Humane Workplace and Its Hidden Costs by Andrew Ross in Back Matter

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

	72% buy the item featured on this page: F'd Companies: Spectacular Dot-Com Flameouts 3.3 out of 5 stars (106)
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	5% buy dot.bomb: My Days and Nights at an Internet Goliath 4.2 out of 5 stars (56) $18.98

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Customer Reviews

106 Reviews

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(26)

Average Customer Review

3.3 out of 5 stars (106 customer reviews)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Funniest of the funny!
Do you find pleasure in reading a scathing review? An article asking "what were they thinking?" If so than this book is for you. Read more

Published 7 months ago by B. pierce

4.0 out of 5 stars An extremely guilty pleasure
I'm a classics and linguistics major who's occasionally dated engineers, but I really have almost no insight into these companies and the corporate culture that bred them. Read more

Published on August 7, 2006 by Francois

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Tales of Wasted Millions
I really enjoyed this book. It is a quick read, but will definately give you a chuckle. If you do not like profanity, this book is not for you. Read more

Published on October 24, 2005 by Jamie Ratliff

4.0 out of 5 stars I like the guy-- he understands/understood the Dot BOMB era
What a character-- it takes this kind of guy to counter what the ivory tower gurus say is right...from the underbelly comes Philip Kaplan-- a good guy to know especially if you... Read more

Published on March 6, 2005 by Joyce Schwarz

3.0 out of 5 stars Front-line insight, questionable format
It's a shame that so much money was wasted in the dot-com onslaught in the mid 90s. Philip Kaplan gives a pretty good and basic account of why some of these companies burned out... Read more

Published on September 21, 2004 by A. Luptak

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent!!! Now this is quality entertainment!
I wish I could find another book as funny and informative as this one. It is definitely one of my favorites!

Published on February 26, 2004

3.0 out of 5 stars A Front Row Seat to the Dot.Com Implosion
Philip J. Kaplan didn't set out to chronicle the disappointment and wrath of so many dot-commers burned by the internet bubble. Read more

Published on January 27, 2004 by James Sadler

1.0 out of 5 stars PUD is as F*(^%ED As the Dot Coms
This book is a very sad rant by Pud (Kapaln), himself a washed out dot.commer.

Here is a guy who rips into many companies from which he ran banners on his site. Read more

Published on January 7, 2004 by Leeza Ryan

1.0 out of 5 stars Cut, Paste, Get Million Dollar Check
Classic Pud here. I'm guessing he did this on purpose, just to flaunt something, not sure what. Literally Cut, Paste, Spell Check, Get 1,000,000 check. End of story.

Published on December 11, 2003 by Ccole

1.0 out of 5 stars Too glossy, no meat
I was expecting a little more substance from the book, perhaps some deeper examples and some better analysis and dirt and gossip from the wackoes that ran these dot coms, but the... Read more

Published on August 19, 2003 by sirlee

› See all 106 customer reviews...

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