Once upon a time, I worked for a failed startup.

This startup’s name was Alerts.com. Heard of ‘em? Didn’t think so.

Anyways, this was Web 1.0, back when the money flowed freely, Aeron chairs were bought by the metric ton and everyone had a business plan to make millions based on “eyeballs”. Let’s face it: we were collectively high as a kite.

Initially, it was to be called Emissary Software but then someone decided that no one could spell “emissary” so it became “alertmewhen.com”, and later, just plain old “alerts.com”. We had a big pile of Java code that scraped the websites of companies that partnered with—and sometimes even paid—us. Customers could sign up and get alerted when, say, the price on a widget dropped, or when a stock price met a certain goal, or if there was a severe weather alert posted in the area, etc. We had deals with c|net, MarketWatch and Weather Underground. Not bad for a scrappy startup that dared to be in North Carolina¹.

We almost got acquired at the height of it all for a stock deal from LifeMinders (heard of ‘em? didn’t think so) that turned out to be utterly worthless. The deal imploded right at the same time that the stock market tanked. After laying off a bunch of people and garnered recognition on that infamous site we “reinvented ourselves” as an “enterprise software company” that purported to graft our alerting technology onto weird-ass things like huge hulking CRM applications². Ultimately, we spent more time playing foosball than actually working, and the remaining husk of a company was sold to Alphablox³ for a pennies on the dollar. Good times, good times.

It wasn’t a total loss. I learned a lot about coding as well as some wisdom about what not to do when working for a software company. I have some tchotchkes to show for it, including two champagne glasses that promise “the first of many” successes. I met some good folks including one who is directly responsible for getting me into weblogging. Let us also not forget that I became halfway decent at foosball⁴.

Tonight, a former co-worker let me know that someone has gone and opened a new alerts.com site that instills an eerie sense of dejà vu. Some of the new site’s copy is a bit similar to our old site:

Ours (c. 2000):

Once the Alerts.com system is enabled on a partner’s site, any visitor can request to be notified when specific Web content—a target stock price, availability of a product, an auction bid, a news article, a weather forecast, discounted airfare, etc.—appears or changes.

Theirs (2008):

alerts.com is your central destination to access, manage and orchestrate how to receive updated news, headlines or the scores of your favorite team or player, get birthday or party reminders, be notified when a fare goes up or down, if severe weather is moving to town, if the price of a gadget has now dropped to where it becomes a steal, and many more.

Besides run-on sentences, their website contains the standard Web 2.0 look and feel (rounded boxes, reflected menu bar, etc.). There’s no actual functionality, just a survey on what you’d like to be alerted on, and an e-mail signup to alert you when, uh, alerts.com is ready.

Anyways, good luck to you guys. You have a lot of competition.

¹ People in The Valley just don’t understand: us NC types are fueled by BBQ and sweet tea.

² It will have to be a cold day in Hell before I consider working on Siebel again.

³ Alphablox is now owned by IBM which means they own whatever code I wrote for Pearl Diver (the platform that ran “alerts.com”).

⁴ The best way to taunt someone in foosball is to start humming that Glenn Frey classic “The Heat is On” before serving. Trust me.