Kozmo.com:  Another dingbat delivery company, but this one was pitched to the young and the hip - in short, those with more desire than money.

If you’re going to promise free delivery within an hour, it might be smart to make it for items with higher profit margins than DVDs or coffee. Better yet, if you’re going to deliver stuff to the customer’s door, charge for the convenience. In an apoplexy of logic, Kozmo offered free delivery.

But it gets worse. Harking back to the biggest weakness of the newspaper industry, Kozmo depended on legions of bicycle messengers. How much stuff could one rider carry per trip and how many customers could be served before the rider returned empty (and earning no money) to the office to pick up the next round of orders?

Never mind. Kozmo raised about $280 million and signed a $150 million co-marketing agreement with Starbucks (SBUX).

A documentary film released in 2001, e-Dreams, detailed the catastrophe called Kozmo. This clunker pulled its planned IPO in August 2000 because even the suckers pegged the company as a thigh-slapper.

Minyanville rating: Not ready for its close-up.

Pets.com: What’s the market for online sales of kitty litter or dog biscuits? About zero, it turns out.

Pets.com could have ruled the world but for one small thing: if you need kitty litter, food or a new toy for your pet, you don’t want to wait a day or two for it to arrive and you don’t want to pay shipping either directly or in higher cost for each item purchased. For some, wandering the aisles at a pet store and thinking about their cute, cuddly critter is almost as much fun as browsing at a bookstore.

However, Pets.com scored big with its sock puppet that appeared in a Super Bowl ad and as a balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York.

But it turns out killer advertising can’t breathe life into a comatose business plan. The company raised about $82.5 million in an IPO in February 2000 and halted operations nine months later.

Minyanville rating: Free the Pets.com sock puppet!

Kibu.com: Jim Clark, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur perhaps best known for launching Silicon Graphics (SGIC), Healtheon (HLTH) and the once sizzling Netscape Communications, looked at the growing number of teenage girls going online and saw a market for a Website devoted to their interests.

The sticking point: no one had taken the time to define that market or think much about how to reach it. So what? Everyone smelled money. In 2000, Kibu spent more than a little cash to throw flashy launch party in San Francisco - and closed 46 days later.

In a prepared statement released in September 2000, the company’s pooh-bahs said: “Unfortunately, Kibu’s timing in financial markets could not have been worse. With public and private markets for consumer Internet companies showing no signs of life, Kibu managers and directors concluded that Kibu’s significant financial assets and employee talent would find a better return elsewhere.”

Instant business school aphorism: timing is everything in love, hitting the curveball and launching an IPO.

Luckily, this ball of fire exited the scene before early investors could foist their exit strategy on the moonbats eager for something -- anything -- related to the Internet.

Minyanville rating: A tactically brilliant decision to avoid the embarrassment of flopping in the IPO market by croaking before filing a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Vonage (VG):  Call this IPO a down payment on the security lawyers’ full employment act.

Voice over Internet Protocol -- VoIP in the trade -- once looked hot and some investors rode the hype despite the impending catastrophe lurking in Vonage’s balance sheet.

Profits? Who needs ‘em! Losses totaled about $310 million between the company’s founding in 2001 and the intense chatter about an IPO in 2006. The problem: Sales were declining as costs-per-subscriber were climbing.

In Vonage’s IPO registration statement filed with the SEC, the company said it spent $213.77 per subscriber on marketing in the first nine months of 2005 compared with $137.70 in 2004. Vonage achieved this feat as average revenue per line fell to $26.63 from $30.99. This is magical: Sign up more customers, lose more money.

The company priced its IPO at $17 a share, the mid-point of the target range, and the stock fell below $13 in 2 trading days. Vonage offered about 13.5% of the IPO shares to its customers, apparently thinking it was a big, wet kiss. Many of those who bought the stock refused to pay after the price fell below $17 a share. Vonage vowed to collect.

That meant war. Investors filed suit in Federal Court alleging that Vonage, its officers and underwriters misled investors. The lawsuit charged that Vonage “improperly crammed investors into the IPO regardless of their suitability.”

Minyanville rating: Caveat emptor, nuts! What’s Latin for “Read the prospectus, dummy”?

This all makes sense in a world where train wrecks beat safe landings, mixed metaphors shuffle the deck and some IPOs are goofier than a refried toupee.

Click through for some of the more spectacular cases of premature capitalization.