Kelly Black

EParties.com already sent out the invitations, blew up balloons, and wrapped the gifts. Only problem was, nobody showed. You’ve probably never heard about eParties until now, but this dot-com failure is a biggie. It just so happens that this smallish implosion falls on the doorstep of eCompanies. EParties was the first company hatched from the […]

Cross your fingers. The first company on my M&A Bingo scorecard looks close to tying the knot. CDNow announced last week that it had narrowed a list of more than two dozen interested suitors. I’d be surprised if the original pool numbered even half a baker’s dozen; but nevertheless, the fat lady is about to […]

There’s a shakeout in the cyber-petstore patch that’s shown signs of fleas for some time. That’s no secret. But apparently PetPlanet.com is trying to keep its latest hiring of Ryan, Beck & Co. hush-hush. Official word is that the investment bank plans to hammer out a new and improved business model for the struggling start-up. […]

If you ever plan to ski down Palm’s 3-month price chart, you’d better bring a parachute. Despite some dramatic spoilage since the handheld spin-off’s raucous block party debut, the company is set to flex some dot-com paper wealth for the first time in its history as a publicly-traded entity. Why it took this long is […]

Yesterday there was a groovy tidbit on cyber-newsstands that caught my eye about a Brit entrepreneur who turned down the handsome sum of 7 million buckaroos for his domain name, e-buy.com. Journalists couldn’t seem to figure out how the bloke could walk away from such a king’s ransom. Simple. The story was nothing but a […]

Summer’s in the air, the BBQ grills are smoking, and sun-worshipping bodies line the beaches nationwide. Now a third of quepasa.com’s worker bees should have plenty of time to catch some rays since the Spanish portal passed out a round of pink slips earlier this month. Proving that many dot-coms need to find a way […]

AT&T got the green light from DOJ trustbusters on its multibillion-dollar MediaOne merger deal. But under the terms of approval, Ma Bell has to auction off MediaOne’s stake in Road Runner by the end of the year. Okay, we already knew this move was coming and it sounded fair enough. Except for a few details. […]

I did my best to warn investors. Honestly, I did. But b2bstores.com snuck onto the Nasdaq anyway. For those of you who don’t know, I moonlight as an IPO analyst for a handful of financial media publications, and I wrote about this wannabe B2B stinker when it first hit the IPO docket. If you’re not […]

Yesterday kicked off a brisk week in billion-dollar merger activity with two runaway announcements. Fairfax-based webMethods announced its $1.3 billion land-grab of Active Software , when shortly after, word hit the Street of Vignette’s stock-swap with OnDisplay . First off, webMethod’s deal looks like the better of the two here. The software newcomer swaps a […]

Just when you think the DOJ goons are over-policing some of the latest mega-mergers, a handful of abuses by big business crops up that make you stop in your tracks. Normally, I can’t trust my government to handle a lemonade stand in this evolving capitalist environment, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Sure, I’ll […]

It’s Friday night at the smoke-filled M&A Bingo Hall, and shirt and shoes are optional. Just pull up a seat, and let’s recap some news and notables. If you missed the debut of M&A bingo, feel free to browse last week’s column. TheStreet.com headlined my game card last week, and some readers desperately tried to […]

Trying times continue to haunt Net start-ups everywhere, with VC cash no longer raining like cats and dogs. Many newcomers are getting forced out to pasture, and early investors are saying, “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” Boo.com and CraftShop.com boast the dubious distinction of being some of the first dot-com […]