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Technology Stocks : InfoSpace.com -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stuart C Hall who wrote (640)	5/1/1999 11:18:00 PM
From: Jenne	Respond to of 3070

Infospace.com Chief executive Naveen Jain put on a rousing performance in support of Infospace.com (INSP), a young Web infrastructure software company that seems to be hitting on all cylinders. You could have bought this one on its opening day in December at $20, or at $40 as recently as Feb. 18. But by now a combination of great deal-making and solid showmanship has encouraged investors to push it up to $134. (About $18 of that came in the few hours after Jain's presentation on Monday. Considering he owns 50% of the company, the 30-minute speech added $180 million to his net worth). What's so cool: Jain bought up rights to more than 75 sources of basic information like Yellow Pages, city guides, maps and news and sells them in a package to Web sites like MSN, America Online, ABC.com and Disney.com. As a result, his stuff now reaches a staggering 84.7% of Web users. He calls the company a "universal arms dealer," and quips about his partners: "We want them all to fight each other with our bullets." A former Microsoft exec, Jain left the company a couple of years ago with a bunch of database experts who helped him build Web-centric, multilevel indexing scenarios for portal clients. Example: Look in the Yellow Pages for an attorney, and you'll see not just a list of local lawyers, but also local attorney ads and a book from Barnes & Noble (BKS) on how to choose an attorney. Revenues from those ads and book-sale referrals, Jain said with a wink, are "high-gravity sales" for his company -- they drop to the bottom line almost instantly. Coming next: This summer Infospace will introduce new software that will comb all e-commerce portals, auction sites, classified ads and non-Web catalogs for any item you seek, along with reviews and promotions. Theoretically, this will let any of the company's clients become a retailer -- and both they and InfoSpace will get a cut of every sale.