Tech IPOs aren't all champagne and dump trucks full of cash. Before you jump at Facebook's upcoming offering (set to arrive tomorrow), you might be wise to consider these past catastrophic, scandalous and downright embarrassing tech IPOs as cautionary tales. There were plenty to choose from.
The initial public offering is a right of passage, the first time non-VC investors get a crack at owning a piece of a company. But given the amount of hype circulating in the tech world, it's also usually an occasion for early investors to get an inflated payout and leave lay investors with a rapidly deflating stock. We're not saying it's definitely going to happen when Facebook goes public tomorrow — but it does seem to happen an awful lot. So before you start buying up shares, we've got a few stories for you.
Webvan
This grocery delivery company is the gold standard of 90s tech-bubble flameouts. It raised $375 million going public in March of 2000. By July of 2001, they'd burned through their operating budget and filed for Chapter 11. Anyone who got in on the IPO was left with bupkis.
Dramatic Reenactment:
