Remember the Web-based pet shop Pets.com? Or online grocery Webvan? Or fashion website boo.com, which squandered $180 million in just six months in a maelstrom of publicity, but burned out just as quickly? Then there was eToys.com, the online toyshop that also shut its doors prematurely.
All these and many others were victims of the dot-com boom. They shone brightly between 1997 and 2001, chomping their way through millions of dollars of VC money handed out in an era ...