Avi Bar-Zeev (cyranose2++at++yahoo.com)
Thu, 1 Apr 1999 11:51:24 -0800 (PST)
[Wall St. Journal -- Paid subscription required]
March 31, 1999 -- San Jose -- Silicon Valley is
full of people who want to be just like Jeff --
Jeff Bezos, that is -- with his nearly $20 billion
dollar valuation. It's the e-craze. The Interet
Gold Rush(tm). And it seems everyone and their dog
now has a dot com website, poised to go public on
the NASDAQ.
In the latest e-business to make the climb up Wall
St, a quiet computer graphics engineer has hit pay
dirt.
Angus Dorbie used to spend his days answering
obscure customer questions on a small technical
email list. Now he's President and CEO of
Dorbie.com, featuring "e-Angus"-- automatic
interactive Q&A on any topic and the newest thing
to take the web by storm.
"Dorbie.com used to be about specialized computer
graphics techniques," says Angus from his posh
Palo Alto offices. "We added an auction site for
used SGI computers as a favor to some folks. It
tooks off so well that we added books, games, and
even movies -- all featuring computer graphics."
Indeed, very quickly Angus Dorbie was getting
flooded by requests for more computer graphics
material. He hired a small staff and moved his
web site out of his office and into a lush four
story building. Today, the empire is worth nearly
half a billion dollars.
Profits?
Following the model of profit-less Amazon.com and
early Yahoo, Dorbie took his concept to Wall St
internet power-broker Cooperstein Brandish. "It was
a marriage made in heaven," notes Cooperstein's
chief analyst, Harvey Wallenbach. "Dorbie.com was
poised to be the next Go. It was like Inktomi for
graphics. I knew it would be a smash."
Indeed it was. Dorbie.com (Nasdaq: ADRB) finally
went public yesterday after months of rumor and
speculation. In its first eight hours of trading,
It nearly tripled it's IPO price of $17 per share
to settle in at a cool $51.
And traders are eagerly awaiting tomorrow's
opening bell. Will the stock resume its upward
climb and take its place among the heavyweights?
Amazon, AOL, and now Dorbie. Only time will tell.
-22-
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Thu Apr 01 1999 - 11:51:18 PST