Here is article in money magazine page 93-94 in Oct.,1999.
"The Web Master David Wetherell"
At the ultimate mogul fest in Sun Valley this summer Allen & Co.'s annual media investment conference- there was a new star sharing the spotlight with such regulars as Bill Gates,Warren Buffett and Michael Eisner:David Wetherell, chairman of Internet powerhouse CMGI." It's just a sign of the times," he says modestly.
Who's David Wetherell? He's a Connecticut Yankee who was among the first to recognize the commercial potential of the Internet. Five years ago, his company's main business was selling information about college reading lists to textbook publishers. But Wetherell saw the Net's potential to take direct marketing to a whole new level. Today, publicly traded CMGI is effectively an Internet holding Company, with stakes in some 45 different firms- from Lycos to NaviNet, from Yahoo! To Ticketslive, from Raging Bull to Planet Direct.
Indeed, there isn't a facet of the Internet that CMGI doesn't have a hand in, whether it's unglamorous business-to business sites like Chemdex(which brokers chemical supplies) or hot consumer "e-tailing" sites like Mother Nature.com(buy your melatonin here),community-building sites like Ancestry.com ( find your forebears) or business service sites like Engage (helps websites place and target ads).
" Our business model is working," Wetherell declares, pointing to CMGI's cumulative return on investment-3,754% since 1995. CMGI sports a market cap of $8billion, thanks to Wetherell's charisma and investment record- not to mention the public's infatuation with all things Internet. CMGI's success has anointed Wetherell as one of the true Internet visionaries.
Not surprisingly, Wetherell has developed a cult following. The CMGI chatboard on Yahoo! has as many postings (100,000+ at last count) as Microsoft's , and the posters are as obsessed with Wetherell as Microsoft followers are with Gates.
CMGI has a fervent band of shareholders who make pilgrimages to the company's Andover,Mass. headquarters (a la Berkshire Hathaway and Buffett); some even vacation together. Nor is his following limited to individuals: Intel,Microsoft and Fidelity have all taken sizable stakes in CMGI to gain access to his Internet insights.
Of course, this could all turn out to be an empire of air. But Wetherell has been uncannily prescient about the commercial potential of the Internet. And he's ideally positioned to talk about the Net's future, since CMGI gets first looks at thousands of business plans a month. "We are now doing two to four venture investments a month, while a year ago it was just one every month and a half. And we are making one acquisition a month and starting three companies a year," he says.
We sat down with this conjurer of Web fortunes to learn what he thinks will be making money on the Internet in coming years. His favorite stock is his own, of course, but his vision suggests other attractive opportuities as well.
One obvious trend, Wetherell believes, is that increased Internet traffic will require more servers: the powerful computers that store and deliver information on the Web. That makes Compaq ( the second largest investor in CMGI), a logical choice. " Compaq is one of the two best, if not the best, to provide them," he says. Others that could benefit, although Wetherell doesn't cite them by name, would be Sun Microsystems,Hewlett-Packard and Dell.
Wetherell also sees a huge business in delivering services to the builders of websites. "It may sound trite and simplistic, but somebody has to create,implement,maintain and service the websites," he says. "And there aren't enough people who know how to do that." CMGI units Navi-Net and Navisite provide such services: Wetherell hopes to take them public soon.
Wetherell is also betting that with people wanting to connect to the Internet everywhere and anywhere, the number of handheld Internet appliances will exceed PCs by 2003. Companies like 3Com,Nokia and Apple, which are taking the lead in wireless Internet access, would be likely to benefit from this trend.
Finally, Wetherell is still sold on old-fashioned content. "Information is Key," he says. " It can
be leveraged up for all kinds of commercial purposes, including e-commerce as well as advertising." That accounts for his recent $2.3 billion acquisition of search engine and portal Altavista. Another content producer he sees with great potential is Time Warner( the parent company of MONEY): "It's got the richest set of content out there."
There is a picture of David with the comment " No one knows more about what works on the Net"
David is part of a 10 member " The ultimate investment club for 1999" in this issue.
Good Hunting
DAVE DICKERSON |
