Remember Netscape? How about webvan.com? Or pets.com? Here is an article which highlights the biggest successes and failures among the biggest names in the dot.com world in the past 25 years.
When I graduated from college in the late nineties, the economy was booming. Dot.coms were all the rage. I graduated as an anthropology major and knew close to nothing about in IT. Yet, after working for a couple of years for a large bank, I landed a high-paying job at a 3D graphics-based ad company called onflow.com in downtown SF.
And like many others in that era, I was given a boatload of stock options and the potential of becoming a millionaire. The company folded and I went to another company called caregiverzone.com based in Emeryville, CA for even more money and stock options. This company almost got bought out, but eventually ran out of steam.
Then, I got hired at another dot.com (I can’t recall the name), but I turned it down. And as luck would have it, this company did get bought out and there went my one shot to become a millionaire.
That was only 10 years ago. The dot.com bubble burst, but the economy rebounded and the housing bubble began soon thereafter. Now, the government is desperately trying to climb out of the biggest recessions since the Great Depression. It’s funny how much things can change in one short decade…