Posted on 05/14/2003 6:00:25 PM PDT by Chancellor Palpatine
[snip]
Agillion, which offered a Web service that helped businesses maintain vital information about their customers, filed for bankruptcy in July 2001 with about $100 in the bank. Just 15 months before, Agillion had $30 million in the bank, according to the suit.
Between the product launch date, Feb. 23, 2000, and the bankruptcy filing more than a year later, Agillion had only a "few dozen subscribers" to its Web-based service, the suit claims.
"Their revenue was so inconsequential that management never recorded a single dollar in revenue in their internal bookkeeping," the suit alleges. Despite the poor performance, "Agillion's management increased their wasteful spending," the suit states.
[snip]
The 17-page lawsuit -- filed by Donald Taylor of the Austin law firm Taylor & Dunham LLP -- contains a detailed list of events outlining Agillion's spending habits.
Among the events listed in the suit:
Spending more than $3 million on a 30-second commercial during the 2000 Super Bowl. The spot aired a month before Agillion launched its product.
Spending about $500,000 to take all Agillion employees on an all-expenses-paid trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
Despite earning only a "few hundred dollars in the U.S.," Agillion opened an office in Australia, which closed six months later.
Agillion entered into a $13 million, 10-year lease at Stonecreek Park on North MoPac Expressway that the suit alleges was "lavish and unnecessary."
Tripling the size of its workforce only to lay off many within months.
Spending more than $430,000 during the first three months of 2000 to sponsor several events, such as South by Southwest, "Austin City Limits" and the 360 Summit. Spending "tens of thousands" of dollars on several company parties, such as a "Casino Night" Christmas party in 2000 and a Super Bowl party at Dave & Buster's, where Agillion bought 168 bottles of wine.
An exhibit attached to the suit is a copy of a color photograph of Papermaster -- as the master of ceremonies during the Cabo San Lucas trip -- wearing a sombrero and riding a horse on the beach as he talks to his employees with a wireless microphone.
Papermaster was Agillion's co-founder and CEO. Papermaster stepped down as CEO in November 2000 and was replaced by Jim Travers, who is listed as a defendant.
(Excerpt) Read more at austin.bizjournals.com ...
Found it on a really harsh website originally, and got interested in the topic. On one level, I'm a little jealous to have missed the boat on finding clueless usgar daddies long ago to fund some meteoric rise to dotbombdom, yet on another, I'm disgusted that bozos like this never seem to get their comeuppance.
The next time you run into a CFP, Broker, Fund employee, Invstment Banker, kick them in the balls and piss on their doubled over carcass.
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