History
The name "Motley Fool" is taken from Shakespeare's comedy As You Like It.
In August 1994, brothers David and Tom Gardner parlayed their one-year-old investment newsletter into a content partnership with America Online. The Motley Fool gained renown for its early recommendations of stocks, such as America Online (AOL) and Amazon.com, and was featured in a cover story for Fortune magazine (1996) about the emergence of online interactive discussion as a new form of investment research. In April 1997, the "Fools," as the site's enthusiasts refer to themselves, migrated their home page off AOL and onto the Fool.com website and established a site in the UK, fool.co.uk.
Motley Fool content is available to the public on Fool.com, in its Motley Fool Money podcast, and nationally syndicated newspaper column. The Gardners have written several bestselling books on investing, most recently New York Times bestseller Motley Fool Million Dollar Portfolio, published in December 2008. The best-known of these is The Motley Fool Investment Guide, which in 2003 was called the "#1 All-Time Classic" by investment club members of the NAIC.
When the plentiful financing dried up and the Dot-com bubble collapsed in 2001, the company, in common with its peers, ran into trouble, resulting in the loss of 80% of the staff in a series of three layoffs and the closure of its nascent operations in Germany and Japan. Following the 2000–2002 downturn of the stock market and the Internet, The Motley Fool started to offer more services, such as a range of investment styles from small-cap stock investing to growth and technology stocks to dividend investing.
A December 2005 Washington Post article detailed the Motley Fool's 10-year lease for new offices in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, taking over office space vacated by Time-Life.
In September 2006, the company unveiled its newest offering, Motley Fool CAPS, a service which monitors and ranks the most successful stock pickers amongst its members.
Read more about this topic: The Motley Fool
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