Dark Star
As the UK's newly appointed special envoy for the Internet, Alex Allan hopes to connect the 80 percent of Britain that isn't online - while convincing telecommunications companies not to charge a per-minute fee, which discourages ebusiness. "We want to make Britain one of the best places to do commerce online," says Allan. In fact, Prime Minister Tony Blair has pledged that his country will overtake its G8 rivals in Internet use by 2002.
But there's a grinning skeleton in the e-envoy's closet: his site, www3.clearlight.com/~acsa/intro.htm, where visitors can search lyrics of the Grateful Dead. Allan sees the band, and its bazaarlike, open-ended following, as a model for the virtual marketplace. "The Dead," he notes, "had one of the first policies that allowed kids to download their music."
Lush Life
San Francisco high-society scions Billy Getty (grandson of J. Paul) and Gavin Newsom (a thirtyish city supervisor) have built a small empire on the good life. Called PlumpJack, the enterprise includes a winery, an upscale bistro, a luxurious inn, and now, of course, PlumpJack.com. "We loved what Virtual Vineyards was doing," says Newsom of the leading online vintner, now wine.com. "But it's gone mass-market." PlumpJack.com will focus on selling varietals from smaller wineries, and on introducing Gen Xers to quality wine. The two say they haven't decided whether to solicit venture capital. For now they're content to sell their wine until it's time... to go public.
Shooting the Tube
Broadband Interactive Group CEO Matt Jacobson is riding an awesome break. First he oversaw the relaunch of Gotcha.com, devoted to surfing, snow sports, and motocross. Now he's busy at work on Gotcha TV, BIG's new cavalcade of extreme sports, which recently debuted on the Fox Sports Network. "It's not just X Games stuff - street luge and sky surfing, things no one really does," Jacobson says. "We're focused on activities that define lifestyles." But dude, doesn't Quokka Sports totally rule this space? "Quokka's the Robb Report of extreme sports," Jacobson disses, referring to the luxury-lifestyle magazine. As for ESPN, Jacobson says, "as long as they're doing extreme sports as an adjunct, they'll never have the credibility we do."
Capital Gains
"When I founded USA Networks in the 1970s," says Kay Koplovitz, "there wasn't any venture capital available." Today, there's plenty of capital, but less than 2 percent goes to woman-led companies. As chair of the National Women's Business Council, a federal advisory board, Koplovitz is trying to change that with Springboard (www.springboard2000.org), a series of nationwide forums where female execs pitch their business plans to VCs. Following a January 27 kickoff in Silicon Valley, the event travels to Washington, Boston, and other cities. Says Koplovitz, "It's the most effective way to get the message across that there are fundable woman-run companies out there."
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