Back in 2000, Verticalnet (NASDAQ: VERT) was a dot-com darling. In fact, I knew several of the key people there – and, yes, they got suddenly very rich (and I've never heard from them since). At one point, Verticalnet was worth in excess of $12 billion.
Basically, the company was a business-to-business (B2B) platform, covering diverse areas like chemicals, logistics, and so on.
If you talked to the analysts back then, the B2B market was expected to be huge. Somehow, companies across the globe would glom onto these networks. In a sense, it was the emergence of a new form of Nasdaq (NASDAQ: NDAQ).
Well, things didn't turn out so well. Last week, Verticalnet sold out for a mere $15.2 million. The buyer is BravoSolution, which is part of Italcementi (a large cement company based in Italy).
Despite this, the B2B business is still a viable thing. For example, Compuware has a thriving business in this sector. Other players include Ariba (NASDAQ: ARBA) and SAP (NYSE: SAP).
But, of course, things are much more tempered now, showing once again that disrupting industries is pretty tough.
Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook
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