Amilya Antonetti, president, Soapworks
Jim Brock, partner, Amicus
Chris Colbert, president, Holland Mark Edmund Ingalls
John Coleman, president and cofounder, VIA
Richard Colombik, president, International Tax Associates
Eric Crown, CEO, Insight Enterprises
Liz Elting, copresident, TransPerfect Translations
Prashant H. Fadia, president and CEO, Abacus Software Group
Maura FitzGerald, president and CEO, FitzGerald Communications
Larry Gilbert, president, The Event Network
Mark Gordon, CEO, Synergy Networks
Ron Harris, president and CEO, Pervasive Software
Charlie Horn, president and CEO, ScriptSave
Karen Janson, CEO, 10 Minute Manicure
Linda Kaplan, senior account executive, Identity Group
Andrea Keating, president and CEO, Crews Control
Linda Kellogg, founder and CEO, Start-Up Resources
Deb Klein, founder, LMI Management
Eric Kriss, president, Workmode.com
Daryl Magana, founder, president, and CEO, Bidcom
Marion McGovern, president, M Squared
Debbi Milner, president and CEO, Jade Systems
Glenn Neff, cofounder, Marketing Connections
Brad Neuenhaus, president, TPC
Steven Nickerson, chairman and CEO, Mucho.com
Gerry Philpott, CEO and president, E-Poll.com
Linda Pinson, owner, Out of Your Mind... and into the Marketplace
Robert Posten, managing partner, Icon & Landis
Eric Schechter, president, GAME: Great American Marketing & Events
Randy Schilling, CEO and president, Solutech
Eileen Shapiro, venture consultant, The Hillcrest Group
Al Shariff, owner and president, GlobeTrends
Marc Smith, CEO, NetStrategy
Maura White, founder and CEO, GoBabies.com
Crowded House
Why are so many sites targeting you?
With all the sites competing for the attention of companies like yours, small business has become one of the most hotly contested spaces on the Web. And why not? Small business is big business. There are some 15 million small companies in the United States today, according to the Small Business Administration. They employ more than half of the private-sector workforce. In 2000 they'll spend $10 billion on personal computers alone, the Yankee Group estimates. And most important, small businesses are going online.
No wonder Onvia.com, AllBusiness.com, Office.com, and the rest are lining up to give small-business owners advice, sell them office supplies, let them chat with other entrepreneurs, and even -- in the case of Idea Cafe -- tutor them in the gentle art of paper-airplane folding. (See the site for an, er, explanation. Yes, it claims it helps you understand leadership.) And the Web-service boom also explains why, for instance, NBC Internet Inc. agreed to pay $225 million to buy AllBusiness.com, on February 1, which was the same day that DigitalWork.com filed for an initial public offering.
"Internet penetration into small businesses is higher than ever. At the end of the year it will be close to 80%," says Internet analyst Kneko Burney of Cahners In-Stat Group. "It's a huge opportunity." Overall, Burney says, more than 30 companies that provide small-business destination sites have plunged into the fray, 19 of them in a serious way. Although the revenue models vary, most of the companies aim to sell business-related services, content, or products, sometimes through partnerships with other E-vendors.
"The Web really allows the creation or potential creation of a channel to what has historically been a very fragmented market -- and very difficult to reach," says Teymour Boutros-Ghali, CEO of AllBusiness.com (and, yes, the nephew of that Boutros-Ghali). Founded by an accountant, a lawyer, and a serial entrepreneur, and armed with $20 million in venture-capital backing, AllBusiness.com offers entrepreneurs help with legal matters and human resources over the Internet -- "all the things that small businesses hate to do," says Boutros-Ghali. In classic Web fashion AllBusiness.com is gunning for market share over profits and doesn't plan to break into the black until 2002. E-commerce marketplace Onvia.com, launched in 1997, has attracted some impressive bets, too, including $71 million in financing from Internet Capital Group and other investors. With total revenues since its founding of $28 million and net losses of $44 million, Onvia.com was heading for an IPO at press time.
By comparison, the cozy, playful Idea Cafe, a bootstrapped operation with revenues of less than $1 million, seems more like a labor of love. But, says founder Francie Ward, who runs the site with five part-time employees, it does make a profit, with revenues primarily from banner advertising. Back in the 1980s, when she was publishing small-business manuals, Ward figured that what entrepreneurs really wanted was to talk to other entrepreneurs, and her site offers that service. Workz.com founder David Johnson had a similar revelation. In the pre-Web world, he published newsletters for software users that boiled down a complex subject into simple, digestible tidbits. He started workz.com -- which has $1 million in start-up funding -- when he figured out that he could do the same thing over the Internet.
On the other hand, not everyone sees the Web as a panacea. The Edward Lowe Foundation (named after the man who invented Kitty Litter) has had a Web site for small businesses since 1994. But last fall the foundation decided to supplement the site with a radically different channel for distributing information: an old-fashioned newsletter, printed on paper and sent out by snail mail. Says content-development manager Eric Vines, "A journal gains legitimacy if it has a print version." --Emily Barker
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