Stockpickr: The Top Internet Comeback Kids

It's been just about seven years since the peak of the Nasdaq, and I'm sure we all have our horror stories of the two to three years that followed.

In February 2000, I was at a meeting of CMGI(CMGI Quote) portfolio companies at the Shutters on the Beach Hotel in Santa Monica, Calif. CEO and billionaire (at the time) David Wetherell gave a talk in which he announced that CMGI, at $185 a share, was the "top-performing stock of the prior decade," and everyone there began to cheer. The next day, CMGI invested $5 million in a company I had started called Vaultus (which, fortunately, still exists).

I had the dubious honor a month or so later of speaking at a CMGI analyst meeting about CMGI's prospects in wireless, which is the same space Vaultus focused on. The woman in charge of investor relations at CMGI was so happy with my talk that she gave me a hug immediately afterward. The rest is history: CMGI, like many other companies, went from $180 to below $1.

On Stockpickr, we have a portfolio called "Whatever Happened To," which is made up of former highfliers that came crashing down. Wall Street shuns these companies, afraid to get burned again. ...