The Declaration of Independents

"There's a lot of collaboration that goes on with so many companies under the same roof," says Kim Fisher, who developed her company, AudioBasket.com, with the help of the WTC and is now its managing director. Recently, one WTC company landed a customer that required immediate turnaround. Another WTC company jumped in and lent its support.

The WTC model is still very much an experiment, but it has attracted widespread attention. After hearing Muther speak about the WTC, Hillary Clinton was so impressed that last year she sat in on one of the group's networking meetings. And some 30 international delegations have visited the WTC to learn from its experience in helping women help themselves. "It's made very clear to people before they come in," says Jim Robbins, an incubator specialist who helped Muther found the WTC. "You can rely on the network for help, and the network will rely on you."

A Federation of Equals
The new independents movement is about friends helping friends. On every level. Locally, nationally, internationally.

Meet Niels Christian Nielsen, another patriot. The Danish businessman lives in London. But word has it he will soon be moving to Silicon Valley. That's where another innovative alliance is fighting the good fight -- this one for embattled professional-services companies. They call themselves Catenas (pronounced Ca-TEN-us), which is Latin for linked chain. In this case, the chain unites 10 small to midsize companies with combined sales of $132 million. Each company is a niche leader in such areas as Web development, relationship marketing, and data mining. None competes directly with the others, but all serve the same marketplace. Members plan on sharing everything from employees to a credit line.

Steven Addis of the Addis Group, a branding agency in Berkeley, Calif., is CEO of one of the 10 companies. "I've been in business 17 years," he says. "I never wanted to sell out. I resisted being bought by a Web company." But then a Danish businessman with a fairy-tale-sounding name came calling, enchanting Addis with an interesting concept for a business network. It turned out to be no fairy tale. Nielsen, also known as Mr. Network, had already created alliances of small manufacturing companies in Northern Europe. But he knew that bringing U.S. service companies together would be different. "Niels came to me for help forming the idea," says Addis. "He wanted people who were saying no to sellouts for very specific reasons."

In a nice twist on the American Revolution theme, the Catenas rebels drafted their constitution in England. One of the truths they hold to be self-evident is this: "Catenas does not roll up its member companies." With Nielsen at the helm, Catenas closed on its first round of financing in January. (Investors include Deutsche Bank and a Hong Kong venture-capital group, among others.) Catenas now owns an equity stake (from 10% to 49%) in each of the member companies, and each of the member companies owns a 5% stake in Catenas. In other words, they all have a stake in one another.

Catenas gave Addis a cash infusion and overseas connections. When Addis was courting European clients, he used the office of a Catenas member in London. He fully expects members to share employees, office space, project-management software, mass procurement, and more. "We're looking for a single banking relationship," Addis reports. The members are already sharing customers. "We create a collaborative culture [when] we do a project for a particular client," he says. But at the end of the day, "we each preserve our own identity and our own brand and our own culture."

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