Internet Capital Group (ICG) is a publicly-traded venture capital

Venture capital

Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...

 firm founded in 1996 by Ken Fox

Ken Fox

Kenneth Allen "Ken" Fox is an American business man best known as an entrepreneur and investor. He was a co-founder of Internet Capital Group who has gone on to form Stripes Group, Sentinel Fund, Syndero and A10 Capital.- Early life :...

 and Walter Buckley. ICG raised $178.8 million in an initial public offering

Initial public offering

An initial public offering or stock market launch, is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. It can be used by either small or large companies to raise expansion capital and become publicly traded enterprises...

 on the Nasdaq

NASDAQ

The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...

 in August 1999.

By December 1999 ICG had a market capitalization

Market capitalization

Market capitalization is a measurement of the value of the ownership interest that shareholders hold in a business enterprise. It is equal to the share price times the number of shares outstanding of a publicly traded company...

 of nearly $60 billion, larger than not only Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 stocks like both AOL

AOL

AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...

 and Yahoo!

Yahoo!

Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...

, but also other large cap stocks like GM

General Motors

General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...

 or Gilette

Gilette

Gilette is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in southeastern France.-Population:The inhabitants are called Gilettois.-References:*...

, and by 2000, ICG had invested nearly $1.4 billion into business-to-business

Business-to-business

Business-to-business describes commerce transactions between businesses, such as between a manufacturer and a wholesaler, or between a wholesaler and a retailer...

 e-commerce start-up companies.

However, by September 2001, the company had become a poster child

Poster child

A poster child is a child afflicted by some disease or deformity whose picture is used on posters or other media as part of a campaign to raise money or enlist volunteers for a cause or organization...

for the dot-com bust of 2000-2001 as its stock priced crashed to less than $1 from its high of $212 in December 1999.