It's old news by now: High-profile Internet start-up bursts onto the scene; big, bad Disney backs it financially; Toysmart.com, the next e-commerce darling of the financial world, hits the street! It all seemed too good to be true, and unfortunately it was. I was one of the lucky ones who got to live the dream and then wound up experiencing my first (and I hope last) company shutdown. The reality of the situation finally set in as I sat at home filling out my computer-generated state unemployment form.
Why did it happen? Could it have been prevented? If I had all the answers, I'd have a venture-capital firm pounding down my door to run the next "can't miss" start-up. But, alas, I can provide only my perspective on the misfortunes of Toysmart.com.
The most frustrating thing is that all us folks in IT were really ready to make some noise in the e-commerce world. We made it through a competitive holiday season and managed to come out with high marks from the industry. Our BizRate numbers were great in every category; we had name recognition and the big "M"--momentum. Everything was sailing along until it came time to pay the bills. Despite the incredible amount of infrastructure work we did from mid-November into December, we just didn't hit the sales numbers. People who came to the site had great things to say, but they just didn't spend enough cash. Why? Well, it all comes down to lousy timing. And timing is everything in the pre-IPO world.
In 1999, dot-com toy companies were popping up like virtual weeds, while the big brick-and-mortar companies (Toys R Us and KB Kids) were getting some Internet religion. The competition was fierce, but Toysmart.com still managed to get its name out there. All it took was millions of advertising dollars. In hindsight, some of those dollars probably should have paid a few bills. But when you're in the start-up mind-set, you figure money will appear magically from an IPO or an acquisition, and the bottom line fades into the distance.
Sadly, that mode of thinking proved fatal for Toysmart.com. When the holiday season ended and customers decided buying toys wasn't a daily priority, money got tight. And when Wall Street finally noticed that companies spending a hundred times more money than they were making were not the great investments originally thought, Toysmart.com's choices became frighteningly limited, and we all learned the term IPNO. Even begging Disney for spare change had no impact. The only chapter left to our story was Chapter 11.
Things got bad toward the end, but there were some positives. The work experience was extremely valuable. Most people are wildly interested in all the working-at-a-start-up horror stories. Maybe some of the interest stems from potential start-up job opportunities those people have been contemplating. Or maybe they're just the type who watch NASCAR races for the crashes. Either way, I've lived through some things few people ever experience. Unfortunately for me, it was the exact opposite of what all those IPO instant millionaires experienced.
The emotional (read: greedy) side of my brain still imagines what could have been. The logical side knew a start-up company meant risk and potential failure. Some of my co-workers have moved on to other start-ups while others, like myself, have gone back to the "real" business world. But I'm always watching out for my start-up buddies, hoping I never read about their companies in the business-section obits.
Send your comments on this column to Jim Hutchinson at jhutchinson@nwc.com.
Are you one of those people who skip over the obituary page in the newspaper? I always pause to check the names. In my family, we call it the "Irish social pages" because that's how we keep track of our long-lost relatives. Well, believe it or not, dot-coms now have their own version of the obituaries--it's called the business section. 
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