Early vs Wrong

Pets.com died in the dot com bubble burst, despite raising $82.5 million in its 2000 IPO at $11 a share.

Because in the late 90s, it was a pipe-dream. How could it possibly work that people would buy pet food from a website… and wait for it to arrive… when you can just go to the store?

Before the year was out, it was dead (trading at $0.22 a share on the day of its bankruptcy).

Chewy.com launched in 2011. Most VC money turned away, in no small part due to the Pets.com story.

It’s still alive, a publicly traded business with a $9 billion valuation.

Many tech startups that died in the 90s weren’t ‘wrong’, just ‘early’.

Sometimes, your ideas are early.

That doesn’t make them wrong.