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Potty Mouth
I picked up a copy of F’d
Companies in the hope that there might be a few pearls of wisdom about
what caused some dot-com companies to fail so dramatically. Instead, all a
reader finds on the pages of this book is a parade of companies with a few
words about each that provided little more than Philip Kaplan’s summary
description about what the company did that was stupid. The writing style is
juvenile, and contains more unnecessary foul language than an episode of The
Soprano’s.
Here’s an excerpt:
Flooz.com
Since the day they received funding, Flooz was my example of how people would
invest in the stupidest of ideas, so long as it involved the Internet.
Flooz was an alternative currency. The idea is that people would buy
FLOOZ, and then use FLOOZ to buy stuff rather than using CREDIT CARDS or
CASH. But the thing was, you could only spend your stupid-ass Flooz at
participating online retailers – all sixty-five of ‘em or whatever.
Hey stop laughing, it’s true. Investors pushed $51.5 million in three rounds
down this crap hole.
Funny thing was, it seemed even after Flooz itself couldn’t figure out a way
to justify its existence. I mean really, who on Earth would use it? The best
answer the company could come up with was ‘procrastinating gift-givers.’ You
know, it’s 10 P.M. the night before Christmas and you forgot to get Mom a
present – I know, email her some Flooz! (That sounds so dirty.)
I always thought it would be a fun, cruel joke to buy a friend some Flooz as
a gift. It’s like, ‘It’s almost money, ‘cept you can’t hardly use it
anywhere, and you gotta act quick cuz this baby is sinking fast!’
I mean, why trust the U.S. Treasury to back your money when there’s FLOOZ!
The company would go on and on about their retail partners, but their
‘partners’ were nothing more than companies that Flooz could sweet-talk into
adding a friggin ‘Flooz’ option under the ‘Visa’ and ‘MasterCard’ options.
Flooz filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on August 31, 2001. Their main
competitor, the equally stupid Beenz.com, closed shop the same month. Glad
they folded before the rest of the world converted all their currency to
Beenz, Flooz, and Chuck E. Cheese video game tokens …”
There’s no reason why any reader should
bother reading F’d
Companies.
Steve Hopkins, August 7, 2002
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ă 2002 Hopkins and Company, LLC
The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the September
2002 issue of Executive
Times
For
Reprint Permission, Contact:
Hopkins
& Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302
Phone: 708-466-4650 • Fax: 708-386-8687
E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com
www.hopkinsandcompany.com
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