Chemdex.com, later known as Ventro Corporation and then NexPrise, Inc., was a

B2B e-commerce B2B e-commerce, short for business-to-business electronic commerce, is the sale of goods or services between businesses via an online sales portal. In general, it is used to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of a company's sales efforts. ...

company that first operated an

online marketplace An online marketplace (or online e-commerce marketplace) is a type of e-commerce website where product or service information is provided by multiple third parties. Online marketplaces are the primary type of multichannel ecommerce and can be a wa ...

for products related to the life sciences industry such as laboratory chemicals, enzymes, and equipment, but later expanded into a few other industries. It was notable for its $7 billion market capitalization during the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Comp ...

despite minimal revenues.

History

The company was founded in September 1997 by David Perry, a mid-level oil refinery manager at

Exxon ExxonMobil Corporation (commonly shortened to Exxon) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November ...

whose business plan won 2nd place in a

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

competition. In October 1998, the company launched its service. The company raised $45 million in

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...

funding from

Genentech Genentech, Inc., is an American biotechnology corporation headquartered in South San Francisco, California. It became an independent subsidiary of Roche in 2009. Genentech Research and Early Development operates as an independent center within ...

founder Robert A. Swanson,

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneur ...

, and

CMGI Steel Connect, Inc. is an American company that provides supply chain management services to software companies. During the dot-com bubble, the company, which was then known as CMGI, Inc., had a market capitalization of $41 billion and owned the ...

. On July 27, 1999, the company became a

public company A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange ( l ...

via an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...

that raised $112.5 million. After its shares soared 60% to $25 per share on its first day of trading, the company had a market capitalization of $758 million despite only having $29,000 in sales in 1998 and $165,000 in sales in the first quarter of 1999, 82% of which came from

. In September 1999, the company acquired Promedix.com for $340 million in stock. In December 1999, the company acquired SpecialityMD.com for $115 million in stock and formed a joint venture with

Tenet Healthcare Tenet Healthcare Corporation is a for-profit multinational healthcare services company based in Dallas, Texas, United States. Through its brands, subsidiaries, joint ventures, and partnerships, including United Surgical Partners International (U ...

. The stock price surged to over $100. In February 2000, the company changed its name to Ventro Corporation. News of the name change sent the stock up 30% in one day, to $155 per share. On February 25, 2000, the stock price peaked at $243 per share. In December 2000, the company shut its Chemdex and Promedix marketplaces and laid off 235 employees. By June 2001, shares in the company traded for 39 cents each. On August 9, 2001, the company acquired NexPrise and in January 2002, the company changed its name to NexPrise, Inc. On February 4, 2002, the company acquired InfoPrise. In June 2002, the company announced the release of the nProcess Platform. The company changed its business plan to be a provider of cloud-based

enterprise content management Enterprise content management (ECM) extends the concept of content management by adding a timeline for each content item and, possibly, enforcing processes for its creation, approval and distribution. Systems using ECM generally provide a secur ...

solutions. On January 18, 2011, the company filed bankruptcy. In April 2011, Trubiquity acquired all of the company's assets.

References

{{Dot-com Bubble 1997 establishments in California 1999 initial public offerings Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2011 Defunct online companies of the United States Dot-com bubble 2011 mergers and acquisitions