Silicon Investor

History

Silicon Investor was launched on August 8, 1995, just a day before Netscape went public. It was founded in Cupertino, California. Devised by two brothers Jeff and Brad Dryer, Silicon Investor was the first Internet community to grow purely out of the web browser. In November 1995, the Dryer brothers relocated Silicon Investor to their home town of Kansas City. The website was financed by Jeff and Brad Dryer’s private funds and the membership fees charged to the Silicon Investor users.

Just under three years after its conception, Silicon Investor was getting over 4 million hits per day, averaging over 100 million hits per month.

"We really didn't have any connections," Brad Dryer told the Associated Press in 1998. "We were just starting from scratch. It was the 'Field of Dreams' mentality: Build it, and they would come. And they did.”

On June 24, 1998, Go2Net, a Seattle-based Internet investment firm, announced the acquisition of Silicon Investor. Go2Net purchased Silicon Investor for $35 million in Go2Net stock. According to the terms of acquisition, Go2Net became the sole proprietor of Silicon Investor while the co-founders, Jeff and Brad Dryer, remained involved as the managers of the website. In the official press release, Russell C. Horowitz, the CEO of Go2Net said, “Silicon Investor is a perfect fit for Go2Net. It is the top Web site in one of the most popular and commercially significant categories on the Web.” Go2Net planned on integrating Silicon Investor with Go2Net’s Stocksite to create an in-depth, finance and investment resource website.

At the beginning of the new millennium, Silicon Investor started losing web-traffic to free messaging boards such as RagingBull.com and Yahoo’s YHOO Finance. Bryan Burdick the managing director of Silicon Investor at the time, however, dismissed speculations that Silicon Investor was losing traffic because of competing websites that offered free membership.

Financial news and services website TheStreet.com speculated that Silicon Investor was losing traffic because renowned stock-pickers such as Tokyo Joe, Anthony Elgindy, and Barbara J. Simon who amassed followings on Silicon Investor, launched their own private websites similar to Silicon Investor.

In July 2000, internet content company InfoSpace bought Go2Net for $4 billion in stock, and in the following year fired Silicon Investor’s main moderator and investment guru Bob Zumbrunnen, whom the Wall Street Journal described as a cross between a “bouncer, diplomat, and traffic cop”. However, in May 2003, Zumbrunnen returned to Silicon Investor when he bought the website from InfoSpace for $250,000 and relaunched it with a new design.

In 2011, Snurf LLC, a web investment company founded by Silicon Investor’s original owner Brad Dryer (also known as Brad Fire), acquired the site.

In January 2013, Nevada based Knight Sac Media Holdings Corporation acquired Silicon Investor. Knight Sac Media announced a slew of updates to Silicon Investor, from the display of banner advertisements to signed-in users, to redesign of the website's home page.

Famous Members

Michael Burry

Michael Burry is a physician and American investment fund manager who founded more than 25 message boards on Silicon Investor, including subjects on Value Investing and Buffetology that remain popular to this day. Burry joined Silicon Investor in November 1996. Between 1996 and 2000, Burry wrote 3,304 posts, on average more than two per day. Initially, fellow Silicon Investor members were skeptical that a medical professional knew anything about the stock market. Burry went on to found Scion Capital LLC, an investment fund that managed at its peak roughly $1 billion. Burry correctly predicted the subprime [mortgage] crisis. He was prominently featured in the New York Times bestseller, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis.

Daniel S. Loeb

Another prominent poster on Silicon Investor was Daniel S. Loeb, also known as Mr.Pink, named after the character in Reservoir Dogs. Loeb became a member of Silicon Investor in July 1996. Loeb is an American hedge fund manager and the CEO of Third Point LLC. In 2000, Loeb was named as a defendant in a ‘cybersmear’ suit for allegedly running a smear campaign on on-line messaging boards and forums, including Silicon Investor. Hitsgalore, an Internet marketing company, filed a $20 million lawsuit against five individuals, one of whom was Loeb. Hitsgalore claimed that several individuals tried to tarnish the company’s reputation in order to drive down the price of Hitsgalore’s stock.

In his Declaration in support of motion to dismiss the First Amendment complaint, Loeb was forced to out himself as Mr.Pink. In April 2000, Hitsgalore withdrew the lawsuit

Anthony Elgindy

Anthony Elgindy, born Amr Ibrahim Elgindy in Egypt, was a member of Silicon Investor. Elgindy was known on the messaging board as Anthony@Pacific. He became a member of Silicon Investor in August 1998, and created his own message board, "Anthony@Equity Investigations, Dear Anthony”. In 1999, Silicon Investor banned Anthony Elgindy because his controversial postings violated the Terms and Conditions of Silicon Investor but later reinstated his membership after a user-vote. Elgindy subsequently opened a rival messaging site WallStreet Strand where members had access to Mr.Elgindy’s stock insights.

In May, 2002, Elgindy was arrested by the FBI in San Diego on racketeering and insider trading charges. Federal prosecutors alleged that Elgindy bribed an FBI agent to obtain classified information in order to manipulate stocks. Without offering any proof, a federal prosecutor also accused Elgindy of having advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, a charge Elgindy’s lawyer called “ludicrous” and an example of “racial profiling”. Elgindy was never charged in connection with the attacks. In January 2005, Anthony Elgindy was convicted of racketeering, conspiracy, and securities fraud. Elgindy was sentenced to 11 years in prison and was ordered to pay $1.5 million in restitution

Tokyo Joe

Yun Soo Oh Park is a South Korean immigrant who ran a chain of burrito restaurants in Manhattan. Park was known by his online moniker ‘Tokyo Joe’. In 1997, Tokyo Joe became a stock-picker when he began posting on messaging boards such as Silicon Investor and RagingBull.com. Tokyo Joe had written thousands of posts giving investment advice and advertising stock picks.

In 2000, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil fraud charges against Tokyo Joe claiming that Tokyo Joe used his online popularity and influence to increase the value of certain stocks. The SEC claimed that Tokyo Joe urged investors to purchase stocks without disclosing that he owned securities in those stocks, and eventually planned on selling them. In February 2000, Tokyo Joe paid a $750,000 SEC fine.

Silicon Investor and the First Amendment Rights of Internet Users

In 1999, 2TheMart.com, an Irvine, California-based online auction company, saw its stock prices plunge and was slapped with three class-action suits alleging that the company had misled investors and engaged in securities fraud. To defend itself against the lawsuits, the company claimed that it needed the identities of 23 Silicon Investor members who had posted messages critical of the company using pseudonyms on a message board specifically devoted to 2TheMart.com. 2TheMart.com’s lawyers issued a subpoena requesting that InfoSpace, then Silicon Investor’s owner, reveal the users’ identities.

In 2001, a Silicon Investor member who used the handle NoGuano, enlisted the help of the ACLU and the Electronic Freedom Foundation to try and quash the subpoena. In April, 2001, U.S District Court Judge Thomas Zilly sided with the Silicon Investor member and ruled that Internet users had a First Amendment right to remain anonymous.

At the time, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, hailed the verdict as “a clear message that the court will not tolerate lawsuits designed to chill online speech.”

Silicon Investor Sitemap

Silicon Investor is divided into four ‘top level’ discussion forums: StockTalk, Markets, Politics, and Pastimes. Within StockTalk, there are six sub-forums: TechStocks, Biotech, Non-Tech, Gold/Mining/ Energy, Microcap, and Strategies. An additional forum, the “Site Forums” category available through the site-wide “SI” menu includes subjects boards related to site news, new feature discussion, a welcome thread and other housekeeping topics.

The header of Silicon Investor displays five menus: SI, Mail, SubjectMarks, PeopleMarks, and Tools. Through the SI menu, users can access the Member Store, Site Forums, review site policies and access the site FAQ. The mail menu provides user access to messaging from other members. SubjectMarks helps users keep track of their favorite subjects and save favorite posts. PeopleMarks allows users to follow the postings of other Silicon Investor members. The Global Tools menu gives users access to basic and advanced search features, profile maintenance, user settings and custom stock portfolios, a new feature.