The dot-com era was full of companies getting heavy funding with zero sales, zero product, zero track record and absolutely no real market evaluation.
Companies would literally spend days of meetings trying to figure out what colors to paint their huge offices and have massive catered lunches.
I worked at one company that had ZERO revenue and had secured $20 million in funding, and immediately hired 200 people. When the money ran out, they got another cash infusion of $40 million from a pending buy out, and when we were being told this by the CEO, I joked to a coworker that we would need to spend twice as fast this time to run out at the same speed...the very next thing that came out of the CEO's mouth was "so we're going to be doubling our staff right away". I found out later that we had TWO actual programmers in our company (I was one) and 10 "managers" for every actual "employee".
It was ludicrous. I think there are issues with today's 'VC' fueled market, but it's nothing like back in '99.
Nothing beats Atari, who in their heyday had 500(!) marketing drones. Who spent their days at lavish conventions in Hawaii etc. and went through a billion dollars before they got bought out (and all fired).
The dot-com era was full of companies getting heavy funding with zero sales, zero product, zero track record and absolutely no real market evaluation.
Companies would literally spend days of meetings trying to figure out what colors to paint their huge offices and have massive catered lunches.
I worked at one company that had ZERO revenue and had secured $20 million in funding, and immediately hired 200 people. When the money ran out, they got another cash infusion of $40 million from a pending buy out, and when we were being told this by the CEO, I joked to a coworker that we would need to spend twice as fast this time to run out at the same speed...the very next thing that came out of the CEO's mouth was "so we're going to be doubling our staff right away". I found out later that we had TWO actual programmers in our company (I was one) and 10 "managers" for every actual "employee".
It was ludicrous. I think there are issues with today's 'VC' fueled market, but it's nothing like back in '99.