It's only been 11 months since a group of dissatisfied SilverStream programmers collaborated to produce SilverStream By The Numbers, a list of numeric substitutes for common complaints about the product.

For example, you can simply say "Five!" when you really mean "That's really, really, really hard to do in SilverStream!"

Or "68!" instead of "SilverStream isn't for programmers, it's for investment bankers!"

Well, it turns out there's more truth in Number 68 than first realized. That's because the March 20, 2000 issue of Barron's business weekly reports that SiverStream insiders "have sold 25% or more of the shares made available in recent secondary offerings. Not a good sign."

It's not a good sign because the money paid by investors to purchase the secondary offering isn't all going to finance SilverStream. A great chunk of it is going to buy shares from insiders so they can bail out and run away (or "retire").

In a January 26, 2000 press release SilverStream announced "that it had commenced a follow-on public offering of 2,200,000 shares of its common stock at a price of $114 per share. In the offering, 1,445,851 shares were offered by SilverStream and 754,149 shares were offered by certain stockholders." See if you can find that event in the Price and Volume chart below.

The Barron's article is entitled "Burning Fast: Dozens of Internet companies are likely to implode this year as they burn through their cash. In an exclusive study of more than 200 'Net firms, we pinpoint which ones could go up in flames."

SilverStream Software is Number 75 on their list of 207 companies, with 15.86 "Months Till Burnout" as of March 1, 2000. The burnout rate is a projection based on calendar 4th Quarter '99 operating losses of 8.34 million dollars on revenues of 9.03 million and expenses of 13.25 million.

By the way, Number 75 in SilverStream By The Numbers reads "How much does Jaguar cost?"