It's been a long time since I wrote anything about Onvia, the one-time Internet high flyer from the dot-com boom days. But news today that the 13-year-old Seattle company is out of complaince with Nasdaq rules got me thinking. What happened to Seattle's IPO class of 1999 to 2000? The answer is not uplifting. They're pretty much dead. Or, they've been consumed by larger entities.
In fact, of the 26 companies that completed IPOs in Washington state between January 1999 and December 2000 -- the golden years of the Internet -- only six remain as independent public companies. (Bsquare, Dendreon, drugstore.com, Expedia, F5 and Onvia).
Five companies are dead, filed for bankruptcy or completely unaccounted for -- HomeGrocer.com, Freeshop.com, Metawave, ShopNow and Eden Bioscience.
Nearly half of the companies (12) have been acquired, some for a fraction of what they were worth at the time of their IPOs. And three companies -- The Cobalt Group, Onyx and WatchGuard -- were taken private.
Here's a look at the technology-related IPOs from those years in Washington state, with my notes on what happened. The list was created with the help of IPO Monitor, and includes biotech companies.
AT&T Wireless Group -- (Acquired by Cingular, which later changed its name back to AT&T)
Avenue A -- (Changed its name to aQuantive and sold to Microsoft for $6 billion)
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