FuckedCompany.com

Any of you remember FuckedCompany.com? It was a just a little site in the late 90’s, early 2000’s, coinciding with the dotcom bubble, that just ranked in the top 20 of the world …  Fucked company was the business and technology wallpaper for the first dot com boom. It was the first site you logged into in the morning to see newest “Fuck'” e.g. Pets.com.

Unfortunately for our company (at the time), SwapIt.com, the site’s author hated us, seemingly more than any other company, and we routinely featured on the site with jokes made at our expense and other derisive comments (all well deserved).

Eventually, even Fucked company, was well … Fucked. But before Phillip Kaplan faded off into obscurity, he wrote a book including his five favorite Fucks – and our company, SwapIt.com made the cut!

SwapIt.com

I worked for SwapIt, as a system architect, in the early late 90’s along with Instagram founder, Kevin Systrom. Our paths diverged slightly from there 😉. I was the 3rd hire at SwapIt.com and built their database and middle-tier, as well as some modules like customer service. The site was initially launched 3 weeks after I was hired. A month or so later, we were swapping CDs. By the time I left, the site was generating 100K a month in revenue, and growing, and seemed to be doing OK. Not so bad, until it all seemed to fall into a black hole, taking everyone’s SwapIt bucks with them! The last thing I recalled hearing was our manager loading SwapIt computers into the back of his station wagon…

I’m not sure if the business model was as bad as Kaplan says (see below), but maybe it was. But he certainly did seem to hate this company, with a particular passion, and made sure to feature a new SwapIt “fuck” at least every month on his site (Keep in mind that FuckedCompany was the 14th ranked website in the world at this time). But other problems at SwapIt, besides bad PR, loomed large including an amazing amount of technical debt (for a website less than 1-2 years old), no focus “Hey, let’s take 6 mos and design our own bug-tracking system”, vicious infighting between developers and marketing (Yes, we know how often companies experience that, right?), no apparent leadership that I was able to discern and loud Venture capital guys who we constantly yelling in their phones all day, from the section of the space they shared.

From the ashes of SwapIT some lessons can be gleaned and some funny stories can be told. The experience certainly made a big impression on me and I’m glad I finally have some time to tell the story in subsequent chapters.

The below is an excerpt from the book “F’d companies” by Phillip Kaplan, the creator of the most popular site during the first Dot com boom, FuckedCompany.com.

“SWAPIT.COM

So let me get this straight:

1) I send them a CD.
2) They give me useless “SwapIt Bucks.”
3) They go out of business.
4) I get nothing.

Great, sign me up!

SwapIt.com was a fiercely stupid idea. The premise was that people could trade used CDs and video games with one another by physically mailing their crap to SwapIt.com. Users would then be issues “SwapIt Bucks” that they could be used to buy other people’s crap that had also been sent to the company.

SwapIt had the ol’ “don’t-make-a-profit-selling-stuff-but-make-money-on-shipping-and-handling” revenue model that was so prevalent among their peers. Get $3 in SwapIt Bucks, and you could buy another used CD for $3.

Okay, eBay’s entire success is based on the fact that they have NO INVENTORY. By dealing with all of the inventory and fulfillment, SwapIt is like all of the crap with none of the benefit.
Not to mention a warehouse filled with old John Tesh and Yanni CDs.

Getting back to what we were discussing earlier, what happened if you sent them your CD collection and then handn’t redeemed your SwapIt Bucks before they went out of business?
“According to the Terms and Conditions of Use, transfer of title of ownership occurred upon acceptance of goods by SwapIt.”

Furthermore, “SwapIt Bucks … are not redeemable for cash under any circumstances whatsoever. Since SwapIt is now closed, credit are able to be redeemed and are gone.”

Translation: “Too bad, too sad”

I believe that this is the only dot-com that actually had people SENDING them product and they STILL couldn’t stay in business.”

Series

“You’re f’d!” – the true story of SwapIt.com – Part I

“You’re f’d!” – the true story of SwapIt.com – Part II

“You’re f’d!” – the true story of SwapIt.com – Part III