Split Between Silicon Investor And Analyst Spurs Acrimony
By JASON ANDERS
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL INTERACTIVE EDITION
March 12, 1999
Silicon Investor and its frequently quoted market analyst abruptly severed
ties this week in an acrimonious split between the financial discussion
forum and the man who generated significant publicity for the site.
Tom Taulli says he was fired late Monday
from his job as a writer and market analyst
for the Web site. A spokesman for
Go2Net, Silicon Investor's parent company,
will say only that Mr. Taulli no longer works for Go2Net, but declines to
say whether he was fired.
What's more, Mr. Taulli says the company on Monday also canceled
stock options on 34,000 shares, after accounting for a stock split, that
could have been worth $2.5 million based on Go2Net's closing stock price
of $84 Thursday. The Go2Net spokesman declines to comment on Mr.
Taulli's compensation. Mr. Taulli says he plans to fight to have the options
reinstated.
Mr. Taulli says he was told he was being let go because of a dispute over
a vacation he took in Hawaii last week. Company officials contend Mr.
Taulli left town without warning them he would be away, he says.
Mr. Taulli wrote a daily column for Silicon Investor and a weekly column
for StockSite, another Go2Net unit. He says part of his role as a Silicon
Investor columnist -- and a significant reason the site wanted to hire him --
was to act as a market analyst for media inquiries. Indeed, Mr. Taulli has
been quoted in scores of stories -- mostly about initial public offerings --
since he began writing for Silicon Investor in July 1998, giving the site
valuable publicity.
For its part, Go2Net says Mr. Taulli wasn't an official employee, but rather
a free-lancer with the title of "market analyst for Silicon Investor."
Mr. Taulli says he was shocked to learn about his termination. "Up until
Monday night, there was no complaint, no warning," Mr. Taulli says. "We
had a real good relationship."
Mr. Taulli, 30 years old, has become something of a celebrity in the IPO
market, often popping up in newspaper stories and on television to talk
about hot new offerings. But he acknowledges his rise to fame originally
had more to do with media interest than with his talents as an analyst. He
says he hasn't had much formal training in investment banking, except for
an undergraduate degree in finance, and says he learned most of what he
knows just by poking around the Internet.
After college, Mr. Taulli worked briefly as a broker for Baraban Securities,
which was acquired in 1997 by InterFirst Capital, of Los Angeles. He
bounced around between a few jobs before going back to school, and
during his second year of law school he started a Web site where he
occasionally published his thoughts on IPOs. His writing drew the
attention of some financial sites, and in 1997 he began
working as a spokesman for IPO Monitor, a Calabasas, Calif., firm.
"It started slow, but late last year it really took off and I was getting a ton
of calls" from reporters, Mr. Taulli says. "Soon I was on CNN."
The media attention is what got him the job with Silicon Investor, he says,
but his complex relationship with Go2Net started earlier.
He began working as a regular columnist for Go2Net's StockSite in
October 1997. At the time, he was writing a market analysis column for
TechWeb (www.techweb.com), a job he still holds. TechWeb is owned
by CMP Media, a Manhasset, N.Y., publisher.
Mr. Taulli says that as compensation for that work he was given options to
buy, adjusting for a stock split, 1,500 shares of Go2Net stock at $1.50 a
share (the stock was trading around $4 at the time). He says he exercised
those options on Tuesday and sold the stock -- his first opportunity after
learning he had been fired -- for a net profit of $121,500.
"I didn't want to waste any time, given what had happened with my other
options," he says.
Mr. Taulli sold his remaining Go2Net stock -- 6,300 shares -- later in the
week for about $531,000. The stock was part of compensation he
received for his work with yet another Web site, HyperMart, which
Go2Net bought in August 1998. HyperMart provides free Web pages to
businesses.
Mr. Taulli says the only compensation he has received from Go2Net for
his work at Silicon Investor is about $1,000 in cash, which was part of a
$500-a-month salary agreement that went into effect at the beginning of
the year, and severance pay of $200.
Going forward, Mr. Taulli says he will continue to write for TechWeb and
has started a new part-time writing job for a Ziff-Davis Web site.
Meanwhile, a book he has written, "Investing in IPOs," was recently
published by Bloomberg Personal Bookshelf.
He says he also plans on concentrating more of his energy on a company
he recently founded, Examweb.com, which makes test-preparation
software for bar exams.
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