Quepasa.com's founder was 26 years old when the company went public, and its website had barely any revenue. Jeffrey Peterson had started the Phoenix company in 1997 as Internet Century. He renamed it in December 1998 to chase a market the big portals ignored: Spanish speakers in the United States and Latin America. Between February and June 1999 its email users grew from 201 to about 34,000. In June it raised $48 million on Nasdaq.

Yahoo, en Español

Quepasa.com offered a Spanish-language search engine, free email, news feeds, chat rooms and message boards. Its bet was that Hispanic internet users would make up a fast-growing audience, and that advertisers would pay to reach them. To lead the company, Peterson brought in Gary Trujillo, a Harvard MBA who had founded a Hispanic-owned consulting firm. Trujillo became chairman and chief executive just before the IPO, and the company had 45 employees.

From Portal to Dating Apps

Quepasa priced at $12 a share in June 1999 and listed on Nasdaq as PASA. The dot-com crash crushed the stock, and the portal never found a business. The company kept going, rebuilt itself around social apps, bought myYearbook in 2011 and took the name MeetMe. Renamed The Meet Group, it was bought in 2020 by NuCom Group, owned by ProSiebenSat.1 and General Atlantic, for $6.30 a share.

Cover: The San Juan de los Lagos Fair, José Guadalupe Posada. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a Mexican fair (a gathering place for Spanish speakers).