Probably a good time to revisit this thread.
Another except from Charles Mackay's
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.
I believe "a company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage,
but nobody to know what it is" was an initial business plan for
Groupon.
Some of these schemes were plausible enough, and, had they been
undertaken at a time when the public mind was unexcited, might have been
pursued with advantage to all concerned. But they were established
merely with the view of raising the shares in the market. The projectors
took the first opportunity of a rise to sell out, and next morning the
scheme was at an end. Maitland, in his History of London, gravely
informs us, that one of the projects which received great encouragement,
was for the establishment of a company "to make deal-boards out of
saw-dust." This is, no doubt, intended as a joke; but there is abundance
of evidence to show that dozens of schemes hardly a whir more
reasonable, lived their little day, ruining hundreds ere they fell. One
of them was for a wheel for perpetual motion—capital, one million;
another was "for encouraging the breed of horses in England, and
improving of glebe and church lands, and repairing and rebuilding
parsonage and vicarage houses." Why the clergy, who were so mainly
interested in the latter clause, should have taken so much interest in
the first, is only to be explained on the supposition that the scheme
was projected by a knot of the foxhunting parsons, once so common in
England. The shares of this company were rapidly subscribed for. But the
most absurd and preposterous of all, and which showed, more completely
than any other, the utter madness of the people, was one, started by an
unknown adventurer, entitled "company for carrying on an undertaking of
great advantage, but nobody to know what it is." Were not the fact
stated by scores of credible witnesses, it would be impossible to
believe that any person could have been duped by such a project. The man
of genius who essayed this bold and successful inroad upon public
credulity, merely stated in his prospectus that the required capital was
half a million, in five thousand shares of 100 pounds each, deposit 2
pounds per share. Each subscriber, paying his deposit, would be entitled
to 100 pounds per annum per share. How this immense profit was to be
obtained, he did not condescend to inform them at that time, but
promised, that in a month full particulars should be duly announced, and
a call made for the remaining 98 pounds of the subscription. Next
morning, at nine o'clock, this great man opened an office in Cornhill.
Crowds of people beset his door, and when he shut up at three o'clock,
he found that no less than one thousand shares had been subscribed for,
and the deposits paid. He was thus, in five hours, the winner of 2,000
pounds. He was philosopher enough to be contented with his venture, and
set off the same evening for the Continent. He was never heard of again
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