A hedge fund manager and a magazine owner paid for TheStreet.com out of their own pockets. Jim Cramer ran money for a living, and Martin Peretz owned The New Republic. By May 1999 more Americans were trading stocks online than ever, and they wanted news as fast as their brokers got it. TheStreet.com had over 51,000 paying subscribers and a newsroom in Manhattan. It went public at the height of the online trading craze.

Cramer and Peretz Pay the Bills

Cramer and Peretz organized the company in June 1996 and funded it with their own investments and loans. The first reporters started that year, and the site began publishing in November 1996. Its coverage of the October 1997 market turmoil sent traffic soaring. TheStreet.com charged readers a subscription, which few websites dared to do, and added advertising aimed at its well-off audience. Subscribers grew more than 380 percent in 1998.

Twenty Years to a Sale

TheStreet.com sold 5.5 million shares at $19 each in May 1999, raising $104.5 million, and listed on Nasdaq as TSCM. News Corp's News America bought $7.5 million of the stock in the offering. The shares fell hard when the dot-com bubble burst. The company kept publishing, and Cramer went on to host a stock show on CNBC. In 2019 TheMaven bought TheStreet for $16.5 million in cash.

Cover: Wall Street Ferry, New York, No. 4579 from the series "Anthony's Instantaneous Views", Anthony and Company. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for the Wall Street ferry (Wall Street).