Rescue at cc:

A very few seethed.

>>> "Let me get this straight. I update to Castle back in November of 1999 and purchase a nonworking program. I spend nine months helping you find the bugs in this program and now you say you can't finish it quickly enough??? Then why did you take my money back in November?" --Anonymous

Mostly though, the customers sympathized. The majority of Wizard users were small-company owners themselves, so they had already walked the requisite mile in Holmes's shoes. And, of course, they were also entrepreneurs. So perhaps it was inevitable that within 24 hours the online wake began to morph into a flurry of business plans, as customers traded ideas for salvaging the company -- or at least the product.

>>> "Fellow Wizard Users, I don't know about you, but I think there's still hope .... I am willing to put a sizable investment in Castle because I believe so strongly in it. By sizable, I mean a minimum of $20,000. But even if everyone else put $1,000 in, then we might be able to convince Bruce to keep going." --Cathy Milos, Stylin Concepts

Customers' suggestions for reviving Haven ranged from raising capital themselves to locating a venture investor to forming an independent technical-support organization using employees snatched from Haven's embers. The most enthusiastic supporters of the various plans had a big stake in the new program, Castle, which would die aborning if Haven ceased to exist. Cathy Milos, for example, had begun beta-testing Castle the previous year at her mail-order automotive-accessories company in Independence, Ohio. She needed a bug-free version, and she needed it soon.

>>> "Greetings, all! I bet Bruce never figured there was as much support as has been expressed in the last 24 hours. I haven't had time to read all the E-mails this morning, but I've read enough to know that the response is overwhelmingly in favor of trying to make something positive happen -- for all of us." --Tom Danner, Advanced Multimedia Concepts

With amorphous plans swirling in the ether, Haven's rescue effort needed an organizational white knight. One appeared almost immediately, in the person of Tom Danner. Danner had used Wizard for eight years to manage order flow and inventory for his data-storage company in Redmond, Wash., so he was among the recipients of Holmes's farewell message. "I couldn't believe Bruce would do that," says Danner. "But my first concern was for him, the employees, and the users. I wanted to coordinate the line of communication."

Danner's second concern was a touch less selfless. A serial entrepreneur who had founded four companies, Danner detected in Haven's dark skies a glint of opportunity. His plan: to raise money from fellow users and build a whole new company on the foundation of Haven's employees, intellectual property, and customers. Danner's own investment would be approximately $100,000. He figured he could count on Wizard users for an additional $300,000, based on informal pledges that had surfaced in the barrage of E-mail messages.

But Danner fretted that any resuscitation effort would prove futile if the 400 E-mail addresses listed in the "cc:" section of Holmes's note fell into competitors' hands. (Only about a third of Haven's customers were included in the original E-mail. The rest found out something was wrong when they called Haven's offices and found that the lines were dead.) Already the vultures were circling.

>>> "Haven and Dydacomp have been competitors since the earliest days of PC-based mail-order systems. We're the logical choice to continue your operation." --Dave Kopp, Dydacomp Development Corp.

The day after Haven closed its doors, Dave Kopp, the president and CEO of Dydacomp Development Corp., producer of a Wizard competitor, had sent Haven's customers an E-mail message that had a sales pitch embedded with hot links. Danner knew there would be further attempts to storm Haven's user citadel, and he wanted to erect some obstacles. So he quickly persuaded his fellow Wizard users to move their conversation to eGroups, a free Web-based forum where they could communicate without giving away the farm. The forum, dubbed HavenWizards, was launched on August 16 -- that same day.

Next, Danner took all the action -- briefly -- offline by telephoning Haven's stunned employees to gauge their interest in a company revival. He reached many at the office, where they were packing up their belongings and -- in a few cases, at least -- continuing to offer technical support without pay. "From the minute Bruce sent that E-mail, Tom was on the ball," notes Russ Horton, Haven's director of sales. "He said, 'Listen, I think this thing can still work. If you're up for moving ahead, I'd like to work at making that happen.'"

The employees were eager to make it happen as well. "I'd turned down two jobs because I wanted to be a part of this new company," says Joe Purcell, director of technical support and the father of seven children. Technical-support specialist Kuhn says: "When I heard there was the promise of a new company, I wrote to Tom immediately. I wanted to go back and finish what I started."

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