Raging Bull - should be interesting to see how SI reacts.
January 18, 1999
Fidelity Investments Executive
Defects to Join Raging Bull Site
By JASON ANDERS
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL INTERACTIVE EDITION
Online discussion forum Raging Bull has lured a top executive from Fidelity Investments Inc. to be its new chief, in a move the young site hopes will help it grab a bigger piece of stock talk on the Web.
Stephen J. Killeen becomes Raging Bull's new chief executive officer on Monday, leaving Fidelity Interactive, the online arm of the mutual-fund firm, where he was a senior vice president. Mr. Killeen, who earlier in his career helped build what is now DLJ Direct, joins a growing list of high-ranking finance professionals who have left mainstream Wall Street jobs in recent months to lead Internet startups.
Raging Bull (www.ragingbull.com), which was operated out of a basement by a group of college students until late last year, hopes the addition of Mr. Killeen will help the Web site shed its newcomer status and establish it among its larger, entrenched competitors like Yahoo! Finance (quote.yahoo.com), Motley Fool (www.fool.com) and Silicon Investor (www.techstocks.com).
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And, indeed, Mr. Killeen, 36 years old, has a history of driving traffic to Web sites. At Fidelity, he says he helped increase the number of registered users of the firm's free Web site to two million from just 30,000 between February 1997 and the end of 1998. Fidelity uses the site to help attract clients to its online-trading service.
Before that, Mr. Killeen was among a group of six people who developed PC Financial Network, a service of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette Inc. now operated as DLJ Direct. Mr. Killeen says that under his leadership, PCFN grew to 300,000 trading accounts from 20,000 accounts.
In recent months, Internet ventures have been drawing top talent away from more traditional financial firms. Robertson Stephens & Co. founder Sanford Robertson and Walter Cruttenden III, former chief executive and president of Cruttenden Roth Inc., have teamed with E*Trade Group Inc. to form E*Offering, an investment bank that will underwrite offerings for high-tech companies, and possibly sell some of the shares online.
Former Charles Schwab Vice Chairman Ronald Readmond and former Salomon Smith Barney Inc. Vice Chairman Robert Lessin are now president and CEO, respectively, of Wit Capital Corp., an online stock underwriter.
Mr. Killeen, whose eight years in the online realm already make him something of a veteran, says he was drawn to Raging Bull because it still has "a startup attitude."
"The energy level [at Raging Bull] is fantastic. It reminds me very much of the early days at Fidelity and DLJ. I want to be part of that again," says Mr. Killeen.
Raging Bull's much-needed cash infusion from Internet venture capitalist CMG Information Services Inc. also helped convince him to take the job, Mr. Killeen says. CMG took a 40% stake in Raging Bull in October 1998 and moved its crew to CMG's Andover, Mass., headquarters. Terms of that deal weren't disclosed, but William Martin, one of Raging Bull's founders, puts the value at between $1 million and $3 million.
Since that investment, Raging Bull says business has been booming. The free site says it now has 34,000 registered users, up from about 8,000 before CMG's investment. But Raging Bull is still dwarfed by some of its competition. Motley Fool, also a free service, says it has almost 300,000 registered users, and subscription-based Silicon Investor says it has 80,000 paying members, with more than 15,000 messages posted each day. Yahoo! Finance doesn't release statistics about traffic on its site.
Mr. Killeen says his priority at Raging Bull will be in building what most Web sites crave: a sense of community that attracts and holds an audience. "That's what gets you repeat business. You've got to keep people on your site," he says.
To that end, he says he's planning to take a step that message boards so far have not. Despite warnings from some market watchers who say it's already too easy for novice investors to execute trades -- and lose money -- using the Web, Mr. Killeen says he wants to bring online trading to Raging Bull. "The marriage between the [discussion forum] and the online transaction is going to be very hot in the next 12 months," he says, adding that he has already "talked to a few people" about the possibility.
"Think about investing 10 years ago versus today. Today you can turn that into a one-day process. You go online, learn everything there is to know about a company, and do the trade right away," says Mr. Killeen.
Meanwhile, Raging Bull hopes to one-up its competition later this week by offering free real-time stock quotes.
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