An Austin startup with $25,716 in lifetime revenue raised $144 million from the public in March 2000. The company was Netpliance, and its product was the i-opener, a small device that put email and the web on a kitchen counter with no PC required. Customers paid a monthly fee for the service. Netpliance had been incorporated in January 1999 and began offering the i-opener service that November. It was a pure bet on the dot-com dream.

A Web Box for the Kitchen

Co-founders John McHale and Kent Savage built Netpliance around one idea: plenty of people wanted the internet but did not want a computer. The i-opener came with its own screen and keyboard and dialed in over a phone line. The company sold the hardware cheap and planned to earn its money from the service. Through 1999 it had lost $43.5 million while waiting for subscribers to arrive.

Reborn as TippingPoint

Netpliance priced at $18 a share and listed on Nasdaq under the symbol NPLI. The dot-com crash began within weeks, and the i-opener business was soon shut down. The company kept its cash and its Austin base and changed course. As TippingPoint Technologies, it built hardware that blocked network attacks as they happened. In January 2005 3Com bought it for $47 a share in cash, about $430 million.

Cover: Sunset, Horseshoe Fall - Niagara, No. 292 from the series "Niagara Falls", George Barker. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for the edge of a great waterfall (a tipping point).