The NASDAQ fell from a high of 5,132 in March 2000 to just 1,470 a few months later, as giddy investors suddenly sobered up after figuring out that web businesses with little or no revenue were fundamentally worthless. Companies worth billions when they IPO'd went to zero. Good companies were dragged down with them: Cisco lost 86% of its market cap. Amazon stock fell from $107 to just $7.
A global recession kicked in within a year. Few who lived through it will forget it. The 2000 crash remains one of the defining features of modern economic life.
One of the more memorable characters from the dot-com boom was Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, founder of govWorks.com. He was the star of a D.A. Pennebaker documentary, "Startup.com," which showed his struggle - and ultimate failure - to persuade local governments in the US to put their operations online so people could pay parking tickets on a website - a novel idea at the time.
Tuzman was back in the news this week when federal prosecutors in New York made a seventh arrest in an alleged market manipulation and securities fraud case involving another tech startup, KIT Digital. He has pleaded not guilty.
Of all the Kings of the Dot Com Bubble, Tuzman has probably fallen farther than most. (We'll tell you what happened to him later in this article.)
Razorfish
The staff at Razorfish, who threw an era-defining party in 1997.
These were the guys who declined to buy a new company called "Google" for $1 million because it seemed too expensive. The people who threw office parties at which transvestites served burgers from White Castle. The men who complained that the "Concorde was a bit cramped."
It was a heck of a time.