I recall reading that Boo.com was one of the first “dot-bombs”-it was started by a swedish entrepreneur, and lost its total investment within a few months-then it came back, now it is shut down, but will reopen. Anybody know what kind of crap they plan on selling? I always thought the website name was ludicrous-what the hell were they thinking? 
The word “BOO” is designed to get your attention.
next question?
I don’t get it. What’s inflammatory about boo.com? Is there some racial slur I’m not aware of hidden in the URL?
Wikipedia says among other things,
To give a little history, Boo.com was a European dotcom that was started in 1999 and was supposed to offer online clothing sales. They had something like $120 million in venture capital funding and blew it in less than a year, by overpaying employees and contractors, and lavish spending on five-star hotels and first-class airline tickets. The extent of the overspending was unusual even for the time, so it was a notorious story.
Aha. Thanks for the background, Dewey Finn.
Amazing how screwing up bad enough will make you just as famous as succeeding.
[QUOTE=Dewey Finn]
To give a little history, Boo.com was a European dotcom that was started in 1999 and was supposed to offer online clothing sales. They had something like $120 million in venture capital funding and blew it in less than a year, by overpaying employees and contractors, and lavish spending on five-star hotels and first-class airline tickets. The extent of the overspending was unusual even for the time, so it was a notorious story.
[/QUOTE]
Sounds vaguely familiar.
Did boo.com actually SELL anything? Or was it just a scam to fleece investors? 
They made a little money; I found articles that said its revenues during the last fiscal year was under $1 million, so not nearly enough. Apparently they offered free shipping on returns, which cost them a lot of money (among many poor decisions they made).
I don’t think the company set out to fleece investors; instead I think it was just really poorly managed, like so many of the other dotcoms back then. The venture capitalists were awfully loose with investment money back then, so I wondered why no one tried to simply walk away with $10 or $20 million in VC money instead of wasting it on building a company that was sure to fail. At least the money might have lasted longer that way.