Silknet sold itself for Kana stock worth billions of dollars, then watched most of that value vanish within the year. The New Hampshire company had a timely product. By 1999 customers expected answers by email and on the web, and most companies had no good way to track those conversations. Silknet's platform, eService, gave support agents and customers one shared view of questions, answers, and history. Silknet went public in May 1999.

Answers First, Agents Second

The bet was that customer service would become a web business, and that companies would need software to run it. Silknet's platform let customers find answers on their own. It passed harder questions to human agents with the full history attached. It sold to large companies that handled huge volumes of support requests. Large firms in telecom, technology, and finance were among the buyers.

Signed at the Peak

Silknet priced its offering at $15 a share in May 1999, and the stock climbed quickly in the boom. In 2000 Kana Communications agreed to buy Silknet in an all-stock deal valued at billions of dollars at signing. The value of that deal fell sharply as internet stocks collapsed later that year. Silknet's eService suite became part of Kana's product line. Kana itself struggled through the downturn that followed.

Cover: Spinning Cloth, Preparing Tea Leaves, Preparing Silk, Unknown. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for spinning and preparing silk.