One day in 1999, right in the middle of the dot-com bubble, I noticed a huge price increase in a little-known company called Euroweb. As the price kept going up, I decided to buy some shares first and try to figure out the reason for the substantial increase in price later (yes, I know … I was young and stupid those days … now I am only stupid).

So, with some Euroweb stock now showing up in my portfolio, I started my research. I couldn’t find any news at all to justify the sudden interest in the company, nor could I really find any general information about the firm itself. I did find however a telephone number from NY and a name: Mr. Frank Cohen, CEO, 212-xxx-xxxx. I realized that they would probably be extremely busy with all the attention they must have been getting that day but I decided to give it a try and see if I could find someone in the company to give me some info. The call went more or less like this:

Me: “Hello”.
Speaker: “Hallo” (with a heavy eastern European accent)

Me: “Is this Euroweb?”
Speaker: “Yah, yah… diz is Euroweb.”

Me: “Hi… I am an investor in the company … I was wondering if you could tell me a little about Euroweb’s operation?”
Speaker: “Our Operation? Vee do communication stuff, you know on ze telephone, und ze, und ze, vat is it called… yah yah und ze internet.”

Me: “Hmm… ok, ok … well the price of the stock is going up today substantially … I was wondering if you could share what is happening”.
Speaker: “Ohh… its going up?? Vat do you know! Some days up! Some days down!”

At that point I pretty much imagined I was speaking with the janitor.

Me: “Could I please speak to Mr. Frank Cohen?”
Speaker: “Vat do you mean? Diz is Frank Cohen!”

Of course I hanged up and immediately sold my shares.

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Reading about Allbirds today brought me back to those days. I am sure the veterans here remember some of the companies that changed their name to a dot-com or internet sounding version and immediately saw a huge price increase.

My LLM had these examples to share:

Egghead Software → Egghead.com (July 1998)
Egghead was a classic brick-and-mortar chain selling computer software and hardware in physical stores. In early 1998 it announced it was closing nearly all its retail locations, laying off hundreds of employees, and shifting entirely to online sales under the new name Egghead.com. Within a couple of weeks, its stock soared 175% amid the dot-com hype. (It was a textbook example of a non-tech retailer suddenly rebranding as an “Internet company.”)

MIS International → Cosmoz.com (January 1999)
MIS International was a tiny, unprofitable company that had done essentially no business and had no Internet operations. It simply renamed itself Cosmoz.com to signal “dot-com” aspirations. Its stock jumped from trading below 50 cents per share to $5 (a more than 10× gain) almost immediately, before cooling somewhat to around $2.

Mecklermedia → Internet.com (1998)
Mecklermedia was a traditional publishing and trade-show company focused on technology magazines and events (not an Internet business itself). It rebranded to Internet.com, instantly giving itself the premier domain-related name in the space. The stock reacted very positively to the Internet association; the company later rode the wave further (and even saw another pop on a subsequent name tweak).

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Current super high valuations? Allbirds-like stories? Does is not look like a duck and sound like a duck?