I was going through a bunch of old papers and magazines, doing the therapeutic, cathartic clear-out thing. And I came across the September 27, 1999 issue of BusinessWeek where the first-ever E-BIZ 25 was announced. Heady days.
Anyway, here they are, unranked, grouped in 6 classes shown in brackets:
[empire builders]
- Jeff Bezos, Amazon
- Steve Case, AOL
- Tim Koogle, Yahoo
[the innovators]
- Louis Borders, Webvan
- Jay Walker, Priceline
- Meg Whitman, eBay
- Glen Meakem, Freemarkets
- James Clark, Mycfo
- Christos Costakis, E*Trade
[bankrollers]
- Masayoshi Son, Softbank
- Robert Kagle, Benchmark
- Lawton Fitt, Goldman Sachs
- John Doerr, Kleiner Perkins
- Bernard Arnault, LVMH Moet Hennessy
[the visionaries]
- Mary Meeker, Morgan Stanley
- John Hagel, Mckinsey
- Bill Joy, Sun
[the architects]
- Lou Gerstner, IBM
- Pehong Chen, Broadvision
- David Peterschmidt, Inktomi
- Kevin O’Connor, DoubleClick
- Ellen Hancock, Exodus
[the pacesetters]
- David Pottruck, Charles Schwab
- John Chambers, Cisco
- Michael Dell, Dell
Seems like such a long time ago. Yet less than ten years have passed. No Google on the list. No Apple. So who would make your list today?
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Ah yes, LVMH bankrolled boo.com throughout 1999, and then pulled out early 2000 causing the other VC partners to do the same.
In a similar clear-out the other day, in preparation for moving, I found my boo.com share options. It doesn’t feel like 10 years have passed!
so what are they worth on eBay? People spent real money on Enron and Worldcom memorabilia, are threatening to do the same with Madoff and Satyam
I’ve no idea, but I think I might keep them for posterity. I tend to hoard such things, and have boo t-shirts, a hat, a match book and thank you card for the launch from the founders, somewhere.
Stallman and Linus T.
Schneier
Doc
James Cronin – the hidden hand behind so many good things
Kim Cameron & Stefan Brands
Jeff Jonas
Jimmy Wells
and yes the Apple Google posse