IPO's and other things!
April 5, 1999
The Melissa File
By Alan Abelson
So, who is this Melissa? And why is she doing all these weird, malicious
things?
Oh sure, we've heard the standard line -- that Melissa is a wicked computer
virus concocted by one or the other of the usual suspect hacker villains --
VicodinES or ALTF11 -- aimed at wreaking havoc on PCs, regardless of
memory, age or national origin. But we're not buying it.
Why not? Well, for openers, both of the supposed perps, we happen to
know, are completely absorbed by other pressing projects.
VicodinES is racing against the calendar to search out and destroy all
solutions to the Y2K problem so the world can celebrate the millennium in
peace and chaos. As for ALT-F11, truth is, he's a Justice Department
operative charged with doing a number on every Windows system extant if
Bill Gates doesn't confess in open court that he has been beastly to
competitors and committed such unspeakable crimes as taking away market
share.
More to the point, the nomenclatural evidence overwhelmingly exculpates
both VicodinES and ALT-F11. They, the record plainly shows, are addicted
to cool names like Shiver or mellifluous names like Groovy 2. Never in a
million years could they bring themselves to call one of their viral creations
something as froufrou as Melissa.
Nor are we taken in by the ludicrous allegations of a publicity-hungry attorney
general, in New Jersey of all places, that someone improbably named Smith
did it. Just as eager for their 15 seconds on prime time TV, the Jersey bull's
counterpart in Kansas, we fearlessly forecast, will finger someone named
Jones as the culprit, even while an equally ambitious lawman in Arizona comes
up with his version of the virus villain, a nerd named Brown.
Melissa, our own investigations strongly suggest, is the handiwork of a distaff
citizen of the same name. She is not only fully wired but is a very nice person.
Melissa (the person, not the virus) is neither mischief-maker, misanthrope nor
Luddite. What she is, pure and simple, is a frustrated investor.
And with reason. For although she's an active trader very much on line, she's
never in line for any of those hot IPOs. Last week, for example, with
mounting ire, she watched the latest Internet phenom, Priceline.com, go public
and also go from $16 to $69 its first day of trading and $82 and change the
next.
As with so many other new 'Net issues that have enjoyed similarly grand
receptions, Melissa had this one pegged cold. What really turned her on was
the unmistakable credential of a potentially big, big winner: Priceline.com,
which has a novel way of peddling airline tickets, managed to lose $114
million last year on revenues of only $35 million. But despite putting in for a
modest thousand shares from each of the 11 different brokerage outfits with
which she does business, Melissa came up empty.
So she got out her electronic potions, brewed up her little virus and sent it on
its way to worm happily into multitudes of unsuspecting PCs nestling
peaceably atop their comfy desks. It was Melissa's way of warning the world
that she'd better get a decent allotment of the next hot Internet number or else.
Which means the fate of the world's computers rests in the hands of Larry
Ellison, Mitchell Kertzman and David Roux, whose day jobs, respectively,
are chairman of Oracle Corp., CEO of Network Computers and a principal
of a technology buyout firm, Silver Lake Partners. But what has suddenly
burdened them with such grave responsibility is not old accomplishments or
fancy titles, but the fact that they're launching an Internet startup whose IPO is
a cinch to make Priceline's opening performance look puny in the extreme.
The trio laid out its plans in considerable detail in a recent issue of the Industry
Standard, which bills itself as "the newsmagazine of the Internet economy"
(and is high up on Melissa's list of must-reads). Their nascent company, which
they call a cash portal, is a "Web software, e-commerce and online trading
business rolled into one." They've christened it HeyIdiot.com.
heyidiot.com
HeyIdiot.com will concentrate on one and only one product: its own shares,
which will be offered for sale at the HeyIdiot.com Website. This exemplary
focus will eliminate all the fuss, bother and expense associated with most
businesses: no employees, no R&D, no sales force, pretty much no anything.
Product pricing, the founders explain, is the heart of their breakthrough
concept: They intend to introduce a stock whose price can only go up. As
they readily concede, this compelling innovation is possible only because of
the unique characteristics of the Internet business model, "in which no known
metric can be used to gauge value."
The basic workings of HeyIdiot.com's business will be as simple as its
concept is ingenious: Customers can buy as much stock via the company's
own state-of-the-art Website as they like -- so long as they pay a higher price
for it than the last purchaser.
HeyIdiot.com's marketing program will be aimed solely at generating buzz
among its target audience: "ignorant but affluent online investors and retail day
traders."
Ultimately, the three creators of the startup confide, they hope to do a deal
with a giant media company, in which they and their fellow HeyIdiot
shareholders wind up with bundles of cash, while said giant media company
gets "a valuable online brand, our entire inventory of buzz and the empty shell
of a business we are calling HeyIdiot.com."
And, our understanding is, Rupert Murdoch has made a fantastic offer to buy
the company in advance of the IPO, only to be rebuffed by Messrs. Ellison,
Kertzman and Roux, who are determined to gain entry for HeyIdiot.com into
the Guinness Book of World Records for having garnered the largest
premium -- both absolute and percentagewise -- ever awarded a new issue.
We heartily applaud the imagination and brio of the intrepid trio and extend
our best wishes for an obscenely successful offering. But we implore them, on
behalf of innocent computers everywhere, to please make sure that Melissa
gets her requested allotment of HeyIdiot.com. She's both a widow and an
orphan, incidentally, so obviously she would make an ideal stockholder.
Copyright © 1999 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
