INTERNET--(esecurities.W)--May 27, 1999 - [iEducate's] amicus.
"...Sally Wells is exactly the kind of person that Portland's Amicus Interactive expects to serve.
"I coach youth soccer, I'm active in my church, I have four kids, my husband is in grad school, and we have a small farm," explained Wells, a technical writer at Wilsonville's Mentor Graphics Corp. "There are so many things in my life that there was no way I was going to be able to go to a class at a set time."
But last month, Wells completed an intensive, six-week, graduate-level class in project management for technology executives offered by the Oregon Graduate Institute. She never met her professor or some of her fellow students.
She completed the course with the help of technology from Amicus, a company that delivered coursework by CD-ROM and established discussion links among students and with professor Alvin Tong over the Internet..."We've gotten validation from the students that they liked it," said LaVonne Reimer Young, the former lawyer who founded Amicus and is the company's president and chief executive officer. "That was a critical step."
Wells paid about $1,400 in tuition, fees and books for the course. She's been reimbursed by Mentor, which pays as much as $3,000 in tuition and books a year for each employee -- and even more if approved by a supervisor. That's why Amicus and its investors think they have a business that will fly.
"I think it will be a paying business," said Steve Domenik, a partner in the venture capital firm of Sevin Rosen Funds*, which invested in Amicus. "When you're talking about graduate education, you go to any corporation, and they'll have an education budget that's largely unspent."
Amicus is paid each time a student pays for one of its classes -- gathering what Young called "an appreciable chunk" of each student's tuition payments. Schools are receptive to the revenue model, she said, because it represents money they probably wouldn't have collected any other way.
If things go according to Young's hopes and plans, in the coming year Amicus will:
• Raise more money to go with the $500,000 it raised last year. The company is busily trying to complete a second round and hopes to finish in the spring.
• Hire a top-notch vice president of marketing who will build sales and raise the company's profile. **
• Link with other institutions of higher learning, besides OGI, to offer their courses by CD-ROM and over the Internet. Such courses might include portions of the coursework already developed at OGI and new material specific to the local institutions.
• Round out the company's technology foundation by bringing in some engineering talent.
It's a tall order, but Amicus has come a long way in a short time already.
Eight months ago, Amicus' business plan was mostly a dream in the heads of Young and her chairman, Hugh Mackworth, who was an early investor in the idea. The company was proud to sign a two-year deal to deliver courses for OGI but had yet to launch the first course.
"The main thing that's changed is the scope of what we're trying to do," Mackworth said late last month. Mackworth invested in and led Portland's Digimarc Corp. for a time before returning to the world of private investing. A year ago, he said, Amicus wanted to persuade universities, one at a time, to include some distance-learning options for students using Amicus' products. Now, he said, "we have the potential to license entire degree programs."
Amicus executives are close-mouthed about the schools with which they expect to strike deals, but Mackworth said the primary targets are graduate schools with strong regional reputations for management and business education. Portland book seller Michael Powell, another Amicus investor and board member, said an example of such a school is Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a well-regarded technical school in upstate New York...OGI Vice President James Huntzicker said he expects distance learning will be an increasingly important part of OGI's curriculum.
"It's something we believe has a big future," he said, noting that OGI's potential students are at companies scattered across the Portland area. "It just makes a lot of sense..."
SOURCE: amicus 206.163.11.145 © 1999 The Oregonian. [emphasis added]
*Sevin Rosen was an early (1980s) investor Lotus, Compaq, et al. Ben Rosen remains Chairman of the Board of Compaq (NYSE:CPQ) and is spearheading the post-Pfeiffer Compaq reorg.
**Ron Resnick, former Vice President, Marketing (NASDAQ:TMSR)
© copyright 1999 SiliconNewswire.com. All Rights Reserved.
...good luck Ron... |
