Two decades after the dot-com crash, Pets.com remains the symbol of 1990s excess in initial public offerings. EBay is littered with listings for the pet supplier’s vintage sock puppets — the most tangible evidence of the company’s short existence. Today, the website, Pets.com, forwards to bricks-and-mortar retailer PetSmart.

When it filed to go public in 2000, Pets.com had lifetime revenue below $6m and just a year of operations under its belt. Still, the company came public with a valuation of more than $300m. Within a year, Pets.com had shut down. Investors lost everything and a legend was born.