The Rapid Up and Out of an Online Startup - The UpStream

Earlier this week, the world was introduced to a new website which promised to ship your enemies glitter. The site describes its process as,

We've had enough so here's the deal: there's someone in your life right now who you ******* hate. Whether it be your ****** neighbour, a family member or that ***** Amy down the road who thinks it's cool to invite you to High Tea but not provide any weed.

So pay us money, provide an address anywhere in the world & we'll send them so much glitter in an envelope that they'll be finding that **** everywhere for weeks. We'll also include a note telling the person exactly why they're receiving this terrible gift. Hint: the glitter will be mixed in with the note thus increasing maximum spillage.

The story was picked up by all kinds of sites, such as FastCompany, Mashable, USA Today, Yahoo and more. After all of the publicity, it turns out that this literally days-old website had so many orders that they were unable or unwilling to keep up with it. In fact, before shutting down new orders, he had racked up over $20,000 worth of sales and over 2.5 million page views.

Those numbers were too much for the owner, though, as new orders were shut down and the site has been put up for auction. At the time of writing, the auction has reached over $70,000 with over 330 bids. Included in the auction is the domain, the software and all emails received about orders and interviews.

If you are an entrepreneur type or just plain sick, this might just be the business for you.