Vonage

Founded: 2001

Status: Suffering a death of a thousand cuts

What does it do: Independent VoIP service provider

Website: www.vonage.com 

VoIP trivia fans know that Vonage origins have a link to Jeff Pulver's "Min-X.com" voice minutes futures exchange. Pulver apparently sought out Jeff Citron as an investor and, instead, ended up investing in Vonage at the start-up stage when the smoke cleared. 

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, where do we begin to document the turbulent pot-hole-filled road Vonage has been on?  The company's appetite for capital has been ginormous, sucking down $658 million in VC money and private debt before going public. Its IPO raised around $531 million with an offering price of $17 a share, but the company fumbled the way it sold shares to its own customers, resulting in a lawsuit. 

Speaking of lawsuits, Vonage has been successfully sued for patent violation by Verizon ($120 million), Sprint ($80 million), and AT&T ($39 million). (Nortel also sued on patent violations, but lost; draw your own conclusions). 

In its latest adventures in finance, the company managed to work out a deal to refinance $253 million in debt with Silver Point Finance after four tries. This wasn't enough to get the stock price above a buck, so the NYSE sent over a notice of delisting if the price doesn't come back up within six months. 

However, Vonage has yet to escape its three chronic diseases - financial losses quarter after quarter, a churn rate stuck at 3 percent per month, and Captain Insano marketing expenses of $272.24 per subscriber.  If a typical customer is paying you $24.99 per month and you have to knock out $10 per month for operational expenses (like providing the service and billing him), that gives you a payback of Way Too Long.