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The dizzying speed with which new Internet companies pop up, getbuzz and go public is enough to make your head spin (and the stockmarket soar). From a field of thousands, why did we pick these 11companies to put on our pages? It's not necessarily fame orfortune but simply our sense that these businesses - which selleverything from software to security, from flowers to Fords - showthe spectrum of possibilities open to any Internet entrepreneurready to think fast and move faster.
Cybergrrl Inc.
Company Snapshot
Name/Age: Aliza Sherman, 31
Company/Description: Cybergrrl Inc. publishes women-oriented Websites and provides marketing consulting to corporations andnonprofit organizations.
Based: New York City
Started: 1995
1998 Sales: $1 million
1999 Projections: $1 million-plus
A vast wasteland: When Aliza Sherman began exploring theInternet in 1994, she found that while there were Web sites devotedto the needs and interests of women, they weren't easy to find.So she decided to build Cybergrrl.com, a Web site that lists feminist academicsites and domestic violence resources. After receiving an awardfrom Cool Site of the Day.com, Cybergrrl.com began getting so manyvisitors that Sherman's ISP shut her down, forcing her to buyher own server. With the additional space, Sherman addedFemina.com, a search engine for women's resources on theWeb.
Grrl power! Site users-dubbed Webgrrls-soon created anonline community to empower women to use technology. Eventually,Webgrrls began meeting in person, and Sherman was flooded withmessages from women worldwide wanting to form Webgrrl chapters."The [Cybergrrl] site offers the best of both worlds,"says Sherman. "It has the instantaneous global reach of theInternet, and the impetus for total strangers to meet andtalk."
The female touch: Sherman's knack for bringing femaleNetizens together attracted notice: Companies such as cosmeticsgiant Estee Lauder now seek her expertise in reaching out to therapidly growing market of women using the Net.
Next move: Having conquered cyberspace, Sherman plans tomake her mark in the retail world with a line of Cybergrrl-themedcomputer accessories, clothing, games and a TV show.
Atomic Vision Inc.
Company Snapshot
Name/Age: Matthew Butterick, 28
Company/Description: Atomic Vision Inc. is a Web site designfirm.
Based: San Francisco
Started: 1994
1998 Sales: $1.5 million
1999 Projections: $2 million
In the know: Matthew Butterick won name recognition evenbefore starting Atomic Vision. With a forte for graphic and typedesign, he created typefaces for Apple, Microsoft andZiff-Davis.
What to do? "Looking back, I was probably moresanguine than I should've been," says Butterick of hisstart-up days. "I was like, 'I guess I'll do this Web[design] thing.' "
Method to his madness: The firm Butterick started with$25,000 in savings was "cash positive within six months."Stressing the effectiveness of simplicity to clients is key:"When you make [sites] small, you can't go wrong," hesays.
Young Turks: "There's a myth that bigger isbetter," says Butterick. "[But] we can say, 'Hey,we're a 15-person company-the senior people are going to be onyour account.' "
True to form: Now that they've landed such clients asNetscape and Wired magazine, Butterick and his team hope AtomicVision can double in size-and maintain its progressive corporateculture. That means not taking an overabundance of jobs or hiring ahuge staff. Says Butterick, "That's when everythingthat's special, interesting and unique about it goesaway."
Netcentives
Company Snapshot
Name/Age: Elliot Ng, 31; Eric Telenius, 31
Company/Description: Netcentives develops reward, incentive andloyalty marketing programs for e-commerce sites.
Based: San Francisco
Started: 1996
1998 Sales: $1 million-plus
1999 Projections: $5 million-plus
Talk of the town: Elliot Ng, a former product manager forMicrosoft, and Eric Telenius, a software programmer, foundedNetcentives while searching for Internet businessopportunities. After talking to Webmasters, merchants andconsumers, they found that while Web banner advertising was bigbusiness, the ads weren't very effective in drawing consumersto sites and keeping them there. Says Telenius, "We wanted togive merchants a more powerful motivational tool, as well as giveconsumers rewards that would benefit them."
Come fly with me: Further research showed airlinefrequent flier miles were highly valued by Web shoppers, who tendto travel more than the average person. So Ng and Telenius designeda reward program for e-commerce sites that offered consumers acertain number of frequent flier miles for every dollar spent.Called Clickrewards, the program launched in March 1998 on avariety of e-commerce sites, including Music Boulevard and 1-800Flowers. By December 1998, Ng and Telenius estimate Clickrewardshad driven more than $50 million in e-commerce sales.
Door prizes: Taking up arms in the "portalwars," Netcentives will soon offer custom-designed loyaltyprograms to help Internet portals such as Yahoo! and MSN enticemore users to their sites.
Autoweb.com Inc.
Company Snapshot
Name/Age: Frank Zamani, 34; Payam Zamani, 28
Company/Description: Autoweb.com Inc. is an e-commerce Web sitethat allows customers to shop for new and used cars and makefinancing and insurance arrangements.
Based: Santa Clara, California
Started: 1995
1998 Sales: $13 million
1999 Projections: $20 million-plus
When life gives you lemons: Having the determination tosurvive a harrowing escape from their native Iran, emigrate to theUnited States with only $75 and earn advanced college degreesdidn't make the Zamani brothers any less vulnerable to thewiles of car salespeople. "I felt like I had been the victimof the car-buying process more than anyone I knew," says PayamZamani, who went through eight junkers in as many years. When FrankZamani, a quality control manager for Microsoft, turned to the Netto research his next car purchase and found it offered little help,the brothers built a Web site (http://www.autoweb.com) to streamline thecar-buying process.
Road rules: Autoweb.com is free to car buyers; theZamanis have exclusive agreements with a number of nationalautomotive outlets that charge member dealers for each customerreferred to them by the site. Personal touches, such as onlinecar-buying discussion forums and e-mail service reminders, bringusers back.
In the driver's seat: The site received just ahandful of visitors in its first few weeks, but by December 1998,had become the most-visited automotive site on the Web.Autoweb.com's network of member dealerships now numbers 4,000and accounts for nearly $700 million in car sales per month.
Proflowers.com
Company Snapshot
Name/Age: Jared Polis Schutz, 24
Company/Description: Proflowers.com sells flowers online, shippingdirect from grower to consumer.
Based: La Jolla, California
Started: 1997
1998 Sales: nearly $2 million
1999 Projections: "We hope to do 10 times that much,"says Schutz.
A mind for business: At 16, Jared Polis Schutz sold scrapmetal to steel mills for recycling. At 17, he spent a summer inMoscow trading on the floor of the Russian Commodities Exchange. At18, he co-founded an ISP in Chicago (a feat he somehow fit in whilemajoring in political science at Princeton). Along the way, he alsolaunched (and sold) an Internet political consulting firm.
Business blossoms:Proflowers.com applies innovations indistribution to what Schutz refers to as the"inefficient" flower industry. His business allowscustomers worldwide to have fresh-cut flowers FedExed directly fromthe growers to the recipients. Schutz self-funded the venture andlaunched on Valentine's Day, 1998: "I was up with thegrowers, packaging flowers into our test boxes, at 4 a.m.," hesays.
Firmly planted roots: Despite bad weather, competitorsand "growing pains," Proflowers.com enjoys a 50-percentmonth-over-month growth pattern.
Rose-colored glasses: Future expansion of the 15-employeecompany could mean accepting venture capital, going public or maybeeven merging. Says Schutz, "We try not to close anydoors."
pcOrder.com Inc.
Company Snapshot
Name/Age: Christina Jones, 29
Company/Description: pcOrder.com Inc. provides e-commerce solutionsfor the computer industry.
Based: Austin, Texas
Started: June 1996
1998 Sales: Nearly $22 million
1999 Projections: They could tell us, but then they'd have tokill us.
Applied learning: This class of '91 Stanford graduateco-owned Austin powerhouse Trilogy Software Inc. for six yearsbefore she realized the corporation's core technology(artificial intelligence), which allowed businesses to efficientlybuild multicomponent products, could cut down PC-building time aswell.
Stepping out: The promise of her new idea was "socompelling," Christina Jones sold her shares in Trilogy to afellow co-owner-but asked for access to Trilogy's technologyand some start-up support in return.
Sink or swim? "I learned a lot about the computerdistribution channel's inefficiencies at Stanford because manyof my friends were industry [insiders]," says Jones. So sheoffered a solution. Using pcOrder.com's technology, corporatecustomers can choose the PC features they want using the Web;computer manufacturers can use pcOrder.com software to set up theirown sites and take orders directly from customers. Now high-techgiants like Compaq, CompUSA, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Ingram Micropartner with pcOrder.com. And boy, are made-to-order PC companieslike Dell feeling the heat!
Roll out the red carpet: Jones knows pcOrder.com'sservices can't be matched and its place in PC-land is secure.(Her business even went public in February.) As for how secure shefeels as a young woman in a cutthroat industry, she says, "Inthis industry, age doesn't matter. Results do."
EarthLink Network Inc.
Company Snapshot
Name/Age: Sky Dayton, 27
Company/Description: With more than 1 million members, EarthLinkNetwork Inc. is one of the nation's largest ISPs.
Based: Pasadena, California
Started: 1994
1998 Sales: $175 million-plus
1999 Projections: $333.5 million
User-unfriendly: Sky Dayton's first experience withthe Internet in 1993 would have scared most people off for good."I was trying to get connected and was extremely frustratedbecause it took, like, 80 hours to configure my computer,"says Dayton, who began using computers at age 9. "But once Iactually got on, I recognized it to be the next mass medium andthought there could be a better way to help people get connected toit."
No experience necessary: After high school, Daytonco-founded a coffeehouse and a computer graphics boutique, but whenit came to setting up an ISP, he was pretty much in the dark."EarthLink was something that was definitely out of mysphere of expertise at the time, but so was the coffeehouse when Istarted. Like everything I do, I jump in with my head first,[learn] the hard way and work through it." Dayton leasedEarthLink's Internet "backbone" from other companiesto save money and emphasized customer support and reliableconnections-"things I wish I'd had when I was firstconnecting to the Internet."
On the ground floor: Over the next few years, publicinterest in the Internet took off-as did EarthLink'smembership. A deal last year with Sprint added 130,000 members andmade EarthLink second only to AOL in membership size.
Internet for the masses: Despite the incredible growth ofthe industry, the market for ISPs is still wide open, says Dayton."Seventy-five percent of U.S. households have yet to connectto the Internet, so we're still at the very beginning of thismedium. That means we have to work every day like [we're] stilla start-up and stay hungry. Our work isn't close to beingdone."
CDnow Inc.
Company Snapshot
Name/Age:
Jason Olim, 30; Matt Olim, 30
Company/Description: CDnow Inc. is an online music retailer.
Based: Fort Washington, Pennsylvania
Started: 1994
1998 Sales: $98.5 million
1999 Projections: $200 million-plus
Singing off key: Jason Olim, a software engineer andmusic lover, was in a music store one day looking for Miles Davisalbums. When he asked a clerk for a recommendation, he was told,"Miles is under M." This flippant response inspired Jasonto create an online music store with a database that would combineartist biographies and album reviews with a list of albums forsale. With help from his twin brother, Matthew, Jason spent thenext six months programming the database and building relationshipswith suppliers and data providers.
Rock-and-roll fantasy: The result was a music lover'sdream come true. Without the high overhead of a brick-and-mortarlocation, CDnowis able to offer consumers a much larger selection-including books,albums, tapes and CDs. "We have more than 100 Madonnaitems!" says Jason. "But unlike other music stores, wealso give insight into when her albums were released, what theysound like, who she is, even what clothing she waswearing."
Number-one with a bullet: Banner ads for CDnow can befound on all the major Web portals, including Yahoo!, Netscape andExcite, as well on a network of more than 200,000 Web sites put upby music fans. The brothers plan to take CDnow global by promotingforeign artists to fans in their native languages and acceptingpayment in other currencies.
Inktomi
Company Snapshot
Name/Age:
Paul Gauthier, 26; Eric Brewer, 32
Company/Description: Inktomi (pronounced ink-tummy) provides thecomputing muscle behind Internet search engines such asYahoo!
Based: San Mateo, California
Started: 1996
1998 Sales: $20 million
1999 Projections: $35 million
Killer app: Paul Gauthier and Eric Brewer originallydeveloped Inktomi as a University of California, Berkeleyresearch project to demonstrate the possibilities of parallel, orclustered, computing, which offers the power of a super-computerwithout the expense. "Clusters are cost-effective,"Gauthier says. "You can build [the equivalent of] asupercomputer for three to 10 times cheaper than the realthing." The system also makes it easy to increase computingcapabilities by adding another PC. By spring 1996, Inktomi wasserving as the brains behind HotWired, one of the first searchengines.
Sharing the wealth: The Internet contains about 400million pages of information and is growing at a rate of 1 millionpages per day. Fast, accurate searches require plenty of computingpower-just what Inktomi's four data centers (each containing200 computer processors) have. The company now outsources itssearch engine technology to 15 different Web sites, includingGeoCities, Snap.com and Yahoo!.
Shop till you drop: Inktomi's latest project is ane-commerce search engine called C2B. Explains Gauthier, "Inthe same way our search engine lets you find information on theNet, our shopping product allows you to comparison shop on theNet."
Kana Communications Inc.
Company Snapshot
Name/Age: Mark Gainey, 31; Michael Horvath, 32
Company/Description: Kana Communications Inc. makes software thathelps companies communicate with customers more efficiently overthe Net.
Based: Palo Alto, California
Started: 1996
1998 Sales: $3 million-plus
1999 Projections: Would not disclose
You've got mail: Escaping after five years workingfor a venture capital firm, Mark Gainey was on the hunt for asports-related Web business. While talking with big firms likeSpaulding and Trek, Gainey heard the companies complain about theirbiggest Internet problem: too many customer e-mails. "Theywere so frustrated, they were turning it off," says Gainey."[Their Web sites were] basically a million-dollarbillboard."
Wag the dog: The partners, who met at Harvard, startedKana to helpcompanies handle their high volumes of e-mail. The origin of thename "Kana?" "It's my dog's name,"Gainey admits, "but it's also a great domain name peopleremember."
Read 'em: The Kana philosophy is summed up in twobooks: The Art of War by Sun Tzu and Jim Collins' Built toLast: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. "Take those,mesh them together and that's what we want to do," Gaineysays.
Next stop: Through it all, Michael Horvath has remained aprofessor of economics at Stanford. And with everybody from eBay toNorthwest Airlines using Kana software and services, Gainey islooking ahead: "We want to help companies redefine the waythey do e-business." With a fresh $11.5 million of third-roundcapital in its pocket, Kana's bite is now as big as itsbark.
Internet Security Systems Inc.
Company Snapshot
Name/Age: Christopher Klaus, 25
Company/Description: Internet Security Systems Inc. developssoftware to protect networks.
Based: Atlanta
Started: 1994
1998 Sales: $36 million
1999 Projections: Would not disclose
Cyberpunk: Reading William Gibson's sci-fi classicNeuromancer in the ninth grade influenced Christopher Klaus tocreate Internet Scanner, a network-protecting, anti-hackerprogram.
Career change: After just two years at Georgia Tech,Klaus got his priorities in line. "I was either going to keepmy grades good or keep my project going. I decided, 'Let'swing it.' " Dropping out and moving into hisgrandmother's house, he founded Internet Security Systems (ISS).
Think global: Whether you call it "adaptive networksecurity management" or "security expert in a box,"Klaus' business has become a corporation with more than 400employees and offices all over the world. ISS now counts the Armyand the American Bankers Association among its clients.
Ahead of the game: The company's secret weapon: theISS X-Force. "It's a security research group geared towardmonitoring all the hacker channels and chat systems that looks fornew exploits we can incorporate into our technology," Klausexplains.
Up, up and away: Not content to just identify networksecurity holes, Klaus says programs in the works are "like acommand and control center to watch your network, be proactive,prevent attacks [and] respond to attacks in real time."William Gibson should be proud.
Contact Sources
Autoweb.com Inc.,http://www.autoweb.com
CDnow, (215) 619-9900
Cybergrrl Inc.,aps@cgim.com
Inktomi,http://www.inktomi.com
Internet Security Systems Inc., (800) 776-2362
Kana Communications Inc., (877) 480-KANA, http://www.kana.com
Netcentives,http://www.netcentives.com
pcOrder.com Inc., (512)684-1173
Proflowers.com, (800)PROFLOW
