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Technology Stocks : CMGI What is the latest news on this stock? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Didi who wrote (14359)	11/26/1999 12:15:00 AM
From: James Thompson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 19700

Some excellent reads from Red Herring, The Washington Post, and CNN's Moneyline (The CNN transcript was posted on RB by Pink_Floyd). CMGi Bets a Billion herring.com Store to Door Shopping washingtonpost.com on CNN's Moneyline The following transcript is from CNN's Moneyline on November 24, 1999. STUART VARNEY: It's considered one of the chief architects of the internet. CMGI: The brains and bucks behind internet search engine Lycos and dozens of other internet companies. This week, CMGI hatched a new idea - a one billion dollar fund to finance business to business e-commerce companies. The idea went over very well on Wall Street. CMGI's stock up 15 percent on the week. Joining us now is one of the managers of the fund, Brad Garlinghouse of CMGI's @Ventures. Brad, welcome to Money Line. BRAD GARLINGHOUSE: Thank you very much. VARNEY: How long is it going to take you to raise a billion dollars? GARLINGHOUSE: Well, actually most of the money is already committed. And what we're doing is, CMGI has 6 and a half billion dollars in marketable securities and so allocating and earmarking those dollars to be targeted to the B to B sector. VARNEY: Have you ever thought with so much capital flowing so fast to this new idea, the internet, that you are in part responsible for a little bit of an internet bubble? Ever thought that? GARLINGHOUSE: The question of an internet bubble - you know -- it does come up in our conversations internally. And what we think about is - you know -- how do we create businesses with sustainable revenue models, sustainable econonmic models. And so we think about it as opposed to kind of the next 3 months -- the next 3 years, the next 13 years such that whatever happens in the next 3 months, we think we're creating sustainable businesses. WILLOW BAY: Why is B to B internet commerce so hot? Why is all this money pouring in that direction right now? GARLINGHOUSE: Two thoughts on that. One is that the B to C sector, the business to consumer sector, has really gotten difficult to differentiate yourself from the noise. So there's so many companies struggling to get the attention of the consumer. It's harder to reach those customers. It's more expensive to build a brand. The B to B sector has, quite frankly, a lot more middle men involved. There's a lot more, what I would refer to as pain in the buying process. And the more pain there is, the more inefficiency there is. The more inefficiency the more the internet can really deliver efficiencies that market and deliver value to potential shareholders. BAY: So how does that make B to B venture funding different? GARLINGHOUSE: It actually is pretty different. And ? we think about ? the reason why we created a fund just targeted at that is that the learnings in the B to C space can be applied, kind of, throughout the BC space. All the companies and consumers can learn from each other. In the B to B sector, you're gong after one sector like Chemdex going after the life science supply market. That's very different than, let's say, Promedix going after the medical supplies market. So those two industries, because they're so different, the approach to those markets has to be considered very differently. VARNEY: I have to ask you. All kinds of people come to you with all kinds of ideas for funding. Anything truly off the wall, truly truly bizarre come your way. GARLINGHOUSE: We get about 2,000 business plans a month and I would be lying to you if I said, hey we don't get anything bizarre. The challenge really is that some of those bizarre ideas we get, you never really know if they're the next big idea. One funny story on that is Geocities was originally called Beverly Hills Internet. Who would have known that Beverly Hills Internet would turn into a four and a half billion dollar company acquired by Yahoo!. So I'll never judge what the bizarre ideas are. VARNEY: Two thousand ideas a month coming your way. Good luck. GARLINGHOUSE: Thank you. VARNEY: Brad Garlinghouse, pleasure to have you with us. GARLINGHOUSE: Thank you very much. Happy holidays. VARNEY: Thank you, sir.