In 1997, the first of the real “dot-coms” came to market, totaling 19. In 1998, there were 29. But in 1999, there were 249 Internet IPOs. And those were just the Internet companies that debuted on the stock market. There were untold others that got acquired or went nowhere. It was perhaps inevitable that, toward the tail end of the bubble, there were a lot of young Internet companies being founded that had questionable business plans at best. Some of the companies were so flimsy as to be just short of outright fraud. Investors (both venture capitalists and the public at large) no longer had
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