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Futuristic Startups that Failed after the Dotcom Bubble Burst
By siliconindia
Beenz.com
Founded in 1998, by Charles Cohen, Beenz.com was a website which allowed its consumers to have online currency called 'Beenz'. The beenz could be earned by visiting websites, shopping online, or logging on through an ISP, and be spent with online merchants. The online currency was proclaimed as global money and a challenger to world's major currencies.
The company raised almost $100 million from venture capitalists like Apax/Patrikof, Oracle's Larry Ellison, PPR's Francois Pinault, Vivendi Universal, Italian financier Carlo de Benedetti and Hikari Tsushin of Japan.
The beenz management has to meet finance ministers across Europe to assure them that the venture was not operating an unlicensed bank of launching new currency. The Financial Services Authority officials were satisfied after the company changed the marketing came for the user account area from "Bank of Beenz" to "My Beenz".
Following the dot-com bubble burst, the company replaced its CEO, couldn't go public, and could not materialize further funding. Cohen's long-term was to create a virtual economy, resembling the real economy. The company took so many of its competitors, majority of whom were dotcom failures themselves, that after the bubble burst, beenz sank with them.
