Cool New Companies

Posted: 11/2000

Cool New Companies
Industry Startups Worth Watching

Sometimes that single word expresses all you feel when a new company describes what it is doing, shows its products or releases the names of industry giants who have come aboard. When competition is great, as it is in the telecommunications industry, it is difficult for startups to survive in this dog-eat-dog business.

And even then, a company with a new, innovative idea that helps meet consumer demands from the industry likely will be acquired or will enter a strategic partnership with a carrier or manufacturer that provides the equipment needed to make it all work.

Still, in a dynamic, fluid industry, in which it seems exciting innovations are introduced daily, the realities of survival remain afterthoughts to many companies that are placing their stamps on the telecom stage.

We call these Cool New Companies. The toughest question we asked in assembling the following profiles was: what constitutes "new?" If the company is three years old, is it still new? For our purposes, we decided to stay within a year's time (give or take a month or two). Even so, we are sure there are others out there, which may not yet be media savvy, that could have been included. Likewise, we may have stretched ourselves a bit to include a company that may not actually fall within the time period because we believe what the company is doing is cool. This particular list was compiled by the PHONE+ staff, with help and suggestions from some industry analysts and some companies who alerted us to why they should be included.

Cool New Company:

abridean (www.abridean.com)

Leader of the Pack: Sean Sears

The Pack: 52

The Mission: To help ASPs provision the software applications they are hosting in data centers and manage their business relationship with their customer, which will simplify an otherwise complex process.

Proof Is in the Success: Introduction in July of the abridean Suite which includes: The ability to provision applications to manage and bill for parts of an application its customers want; easy-to-use administration tools for the ASPs support personnel; end-user self-administration tools that allow business customers to order or modify their own services; and usage metering and bill collection for all services.

Cool New Company:

American Fiber Systems Inc. (www.metrofiberusa.com)

Leader of the Pack: David G. Rusin

The Pack: 17

The Mission: To become the metromedia fiber network of medium-sized cities by bringing them the dark-fiber infrastructure that provides access to the best communications technology available, and to eliminate last-mile bottlenecks.

Proof Is in the Success: Attracted the attention, venture capital and support from Lucent Venture Partners.

Cool New Company:

Atrica Inc. (www.atrica.com)

Leader of the Pack: Avinoam Rubinstain

The Pack: 75

The Mission: To deliver the most cost-effective, high performance optical Ethernet platforms to service providers who are building next-generation metro networks.

Proof Is in the Success: Launched as an independent company on Sept. 18, after graduating from 3Com Corp.'s (www.3com.com) directed start-up program. The two had worked together in the development of Ethernet, but Atrica believes it is ready to take the next step by making Ethernet the foundation for the metro network. It closed its first round of financing with $16 million from Accel Partners (www.accel.com) and Benchmark Capital (www.benchmark.com), and from global investors including France Telecom (www.francetelecom.fr).

Cool New Company:

buyersonline (www.buyersonline.com)

Leader of the Pack: Theodore Stern

The Pack: 90

The Mission: To deliver the highest quality essential products and services at the lowest possible price; to perform customer care at a level that exceeds member expectations; and to provide members an opportunity to reduce the cost of goods and services.

Proof Is in the Success: First round of national television advertising launched Aug. 19, featuring Della Reese, Marie Osmond and Dick Clark.

Cool New Company:

BuyTelco Inc. (www.buytelco.com)

Leaders of the Pack: Steven A. McKean, David S. McKean and Kurt Scott

The Pack: 18

The Mission: Provide services via an Internet business-to-business portal for small businesses, system integrators and value-added resellers (VARs) to learn, research, provision and manage telecommunications. Also to provide tools to help small businesses select bundled offerings from long distance to DSL.

Proof Is in the Sucess: Launched its Partner Place program (Sept. 18) during PHONE+'s AgENt Conference & Expo in New Orleans, which is designed to complement partner solutions with a national offering of diverse telecom services; three days earlier, it announced that industry veteran Brownell Chalstrom had joined its advisory board.

Cool New Company:

BuzMe.com Inc. (www.buzme.com)

Leader of the Pack: Vlad Shmunis

The Pack: 45

The Mission: Keeping customers online and in touch by providing Internet call waiting, free voice mail and call control functionalities, which are designed to make all communications messaging easily managed from anywhere and from any device.

Proof Is in the Success: An August New York Law Journal article that sports the question, "Why didn't I think of that?" notes that you could have ordered voice mail from your phone company for $10 or so, but you still would not have known about the call until after you have completed the online session. It calls Internet call waiting a concept that fills a void for many solo work-at-home professionals.

Cool New Company:

Callisma (www.callisma.com)

Leader of the Pack: Ralph Troupe

The Pack: More than 250 since it was founded eight months ago.

The Mission: To help clients meet their strategic business objectives by equipping them with the best network architecture, communication technologies and products available.

Proof Is in the Success: Signed this year a strategic alliance with Cisco Systems Inc. (www.cisco.com), and secured $25 million in second round funding.

Cool New Company:

CLECNet (www.clecnet.com)

Leader of the Pack: Larry J. Laurano

The Pack: 8

The Mission: Provide reliable bussiness grade bandwidth solutions to business throughout the country.

Proof Is in the Success: Signing partnerships with NetConstuct, Inc., RoseTel Systems (www.rosetechnologies.com), Futurelink (www.futurelink.net), Network Access Solutions (www.nas-corp.com), Intermedia Communications Inc. (www.intermedia.com), True Choice Communications.

Cool New Company:

ConvergencE LLC (www.neutral-colo.com)

Leader of the Pack: Britten V. Wolf

The Pack: 25

The Mission: To make Las Vegas a magnet for e-commerce companies from California. The company offers clients neutral, secure and power-protected collocation space for computer and telecommunications systems; especially dedicated to ILECs and IXCs.

Proof Is in the Success: Before the Nov. 1 opening, ConvergencE could recite a list of partners that includes: Cais Internet (www.cais.com), Level 3 Communications Inc. (www.level3.com), Metromedia Fiber Network (www.mmfn.com), Nevada Bell (www.nevadabell.com), Sierra Pacific Communications (www.sp-com.com), Silicon Oasis.com (www.siliconoasis.com), Sprint Corp (www.sprint.com), WorldCom Inc. (www.wcom.com) and XO Communications (www.xo.com)

Cool New Company:

Kenetec (www.kenetec.com)

Leader of the Pack: Kuldip Bains

The Pack: 60

The Mission: To provide next-generation broadband communications that capitalize on changes and opportunities that have emerged since implementation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which includes an access solution that delivers "always-on" high-speed connections and services from multiple service providers.

Proof Is in the Success: Attracted Ascent Venture Partners (www.ascentvp.com), Commonwealth Capital Ventures (www.ccvlp.com), Delta Capital Investments Ltd., OnLake Investments LLC (www.onlake.com) and St. Paul Venture Capital (www.stpaulvc.com) to help support its development of access solutions for small and medium-sized businesses in the multitenant unit (MTU) market.

Cool New Company:

LighTrade (www.lightrade.com)

Leader of the Pack: W. Theodore Pierson Jr.

The Pack: 25

The Mission: To provide real-time interconnection and QoS monitoring services for the delivery of telecom capacity sold through any means.

The Proof Is in the Success: A $50 million agreement with Lucent Technologies (www.lucent.com) to create a new network for its global bandwidth trading.

Cool New Company:

MagNetPoint Inc. (www.magnetpoint.com)

Leaders of the Pack: Ron Hooper and Kayvan Alikhani

The Pack: 30-35

The Mission: Develops intelligent, interactive messaging solutions that address the market need for advanced universal messaging--mobile/remote access, device-independent and cross-platform delivery, wireless and personal digital assistant-based commerce, and integration of disparate systems and devices. Its three key markets are carriers, ISPs and ASPs.

Proof Is in the Success: With the completion of its final beta test, MagNetPoint's worldwide relationship channel is under development and positioned to lead the high-growth messaging market.

Cool New Company:

Riverstone Networks (www.riverstonenet.com)

Leader of the Pack: Romulus Pereira

The Pack: 43

The Mission: To provide routers and switches that help ISPs, managed service providers (MSPs), ASPs and CSPs turn bandwidth into profitable services. These routers are the only ones that offer the bit-slicing, accounting and security features that service providers need to offer enhanced data services without sacrificing high performance--and bulletproof reliability under all network conditions.

Proof Is in the Success: This engineering and management team has been successfully developing switch routers since 1996, when their products became sensations for its former company Yago Systems. The staff believes in the products so much, 43 of the 45 Yago employees came over to Riverstone when it was founded.

Cool New Company:

TalkingNets (www.talkingnets.com)

Leader of the Pack: John Philips

The Pack: 21

The Mission: To deliver innovative and cost-effective telephony services to the small and medium-sized business and branch offices by providing a wholesale telephony solution that allows ISPs and data CLECs to provide advanced voice services.

Proof Is in the Success: TalkingNets has introduced a solution that actually permits ISPs and data CLECs to offer voice services to their business customers, selected Cisco Systems Inc.'s (www.cisco.com) IP backbone and adopted telecom technologies inc.'s (www.telecomtechnologies.com) softswitch technology to support its next-generation nationwide local exchange network.

Cool New Company:

TelecomCareers.Net (www.telecomnet.net)

Leaders of the Pack: Quinn Jones and Dennis Watzke

The Pack: 6

The Mission: To be the world's premier online telecommunications employment center. The career center, powered by myjobsearch.com, is a job seeker's own personal development center, providing telecom professionals with industry articles, quick polls, salary surveys and an ask-the-expert column.

Proof Is in the Success: In less than a year, the employment center has attracted more than 25,000 job postings, has more than 15,000 resumes on file and has welcomed more than 350 employer clients.

Cool New Company:

TeleGea (www.telegeacorporate.com)

Leader of the Pack: Steven Domenikos

The Pack: 58

The Mission: To be the leading provider of telecom e-business solutions. Using extensible markup language (XML), it has developed a unique platform that enables the secure, real-time, online sale, delivery and web-enabled management of telecom services.

Proof Is in the Success: Quickly established strategic partners with Nissho Iwai Corp. (www.nissho.iwai.co.jp), Boston Communications Group Inc. (www.bcgi.net), Exodus Communications Inc. (www.exodus.net), Synchrony (www.synchrony.com), ConeXus Ltd. (www.conexus.net), Dell Computer Corporation (www.dell.com), Linx Communications Inc. (www.linxcom.com) and Interpass Net Technologies (www.interpass.com). Its model attracted a WorldCom Inc. (www.wcom.com) executive to its board of directors.

Cool New Company:

telephone.com (www.telephone.com)

Leaders of the Pack: Hensley E. "Buddy" West, Jeffrey A. Jones, James Kilkelly, John Duffy and William H. Cadogan

The Pack: 45

The Mission: To be a total global resource for efficient and cost-effective trading of telecom equipment and bandwidth by blending traditional business practices with the power of the Internet to facilitate business and commerce. It offers wholesale capacity by providing a post-and-browse style exchange for bandwidth, minutes, dark fiber and VoIP, as well as new and pre-owned refurbished and surplus carrier-class and CPE.

Proof Is in the Success: Successfully facilitated a deal for a bandwidth route between Los Angeles and St. Louis that saved the buyer more than $250,000 and helped the seller dispense one of its low-use routes, demonstrating the value of the exchange and the merits of the Telephone.com business model.

Cool New Company:

TeliSmart (www.telismart.com)

Leader of the Pack: Michael Anderson

The Pack: N/A

The Mission: To let buyers control the purchasing product in a shorter amount of time than the traditional bidding process; to modernize or upgrade network infrastructure at reduced costs; and to ensure complete customer satisfaction.

Proof Is in the Success: On Sept. 6, TeliSmart.com unveiled its new community section, offering industry-specific content provided by a growing roster of leading product research and analyst firms, as well as its own telecom experts.

Cool New Company:

Truly Global (www.trulyglobal.com)

Leader of the Pack: Michael Spencer

The Pack: 21

The Mission: To let users take the world with them. This web-based, consumer-driven Internet telephony portal provides voice services and total flexibility so subscribers can customize their Internet communications.

Proof Is in the Success: The spin-off is the result of five years of VocalTec experience in the Internet telephony market and customer input. A key aspect to Truly Global is that it allows customers to create web-based personal pages that will let them access data according to their preferences from home, work, vacation or anywhere else.

Cool New Company:

VoicePump Inc. (www.voicepump.com)

Leader of the Pack: Cole Erskine

The Pack: N/A

The Mission: To provide product-oriented embedded voice-over-packet network software programs. For use in the implementation and integration of innovative speech coding and telecom algorithms for VoIP and VoDSL appliations.

Proof Is in the Success: DSP Group Inc. (www.dspg.com) acquired approximately 7 percent of the outstanding VoicePump shares in March.

Cool New Company:

Voxeo (www.voxeo.com)

Leaders of the Pack: Gary Reback and Jonathan Taylor

The Pack: 55

The Mission: Provide the predominant infrastructure for connecting the phone, web and people. Provide telecom and web companies a free, open, standards-based platform for the rapid creation of phone services, including speech-based voice portals to network-based follow-me/find-me.

Proof Is in the Success: Interest from well-known Silicon Valley venture capitalists Mayfield Fund (www.mayfield.com) and Crosspoint Venture Partners (www.cpvp.com); and an idea that others have discussed, but no one else has pushed to implementation.

Cool New Company:

Vroom Technologies Inc. (www.vroom.net)

Leader of the Pack: Richard K. Coleman

The Pack: 150

The Mission: To make account executives better at their jobs by providing the information required to target and qualify leads, and reduce the time to close. By incorporating telecommunications processes and best practices into its software, Vroom's products make it easier to create proposals or know if services are available. This allows agents to focus on selling.

Proof Is in the Success: Strategic partnerships with Daleen Technologies Inc. (www.daleen.com), Microsoft Corp. (www.microsoft.com) and Neon Software Inc. (www.neon.com).