Now that memories of depleted mutual funds and lost Aereon charis are fading memory... anyone have any good stories?
I have a good one.
In November of 1999 I was on a domain name buying craze. Bought over two hundred names, mostly really dumb ones, that I hoped would be worth huge money someday. A few examples:
flomp.com
buylinuxnow.com
ipostoday.com
blah, blah, blah
One Sunday morning in November I was typing in names in Network Solution's search box. I happened to type in shopbot.com, which was a well-know shopping comparison site owned by Excite. Similar to MySimon and Dealtime.
It was available.
I bought it for $35.
The next morning I received a telephone call from a guy back east who was willing to pay me a million bucks for it... no $hit. I told him I'd think about it.
I sat on the name for a couple of months, then one morning I read that MySimon had been sold for $780 million. Being that I owned the generic name for shopping 'bot' sites, sort of the Kleenex or Velcro equivalent, I figured it was time to start asking around and do something with it.
I contacted a business associate in Newport Beach and we entered into an agreement: I was to receive $4.5 million for a 75% stake in the name and future business! I was a millionaire! But there was just one catch.... the payments to me wouldn't start until he secured VC money to make it all happen.
Well, we did the dog and pony show for 3 months, all while the dot com bubble began to burst. In the end, he received a few hundred thousand, and I was paid some money, but it all crashed and burned. Luckily I didn't buy that $800k home I was looking at back then.
I still own a bunch of the domain names, but nobody has ever tried to buy them from me.
No harm done, I guess, but it was a great rollercoaster ride while it lasted
For you SF people... have the art and music groups reclaimed the art district studio spaces from the failed dotcoms yet??