Trendsetters

Michelle Miller
President -- Marex.com, Miami
Born and raised: Williamsport, Pa., home of the Little League World Series.
Quote: "I see myself as a long-term player and staying in Miami.
I don't look to leave."
Pastimes: Sailing, tennis, travel.
Odd thing in the closet: An early, 20-pound Apple laptop.

At 34, Michelle Miller certainly has an enviable resume. She majored in quantitative business analysis at Penn State University and then went straight to Apple Computer in new-product development. She's had stints with the McKenna Group, a Silicon Valley tech consulting firm, and investment bank Friedman Billings Ramsey. She has an MBA from Harvard. In 2000, she became chief operating officer of Marex.com, a Coconut Grove business-to-business company in the boat-building industry. In January, she became president and took over all day-to-day operations.

Miller will burnish her reputation considerably if she can make Marex.com as hot as her resume. The company laid off 28 employees in December. The company's stock trades for less than $3, down from a high of $41.75. Through the first nine months of 2000 as it built its system, it brought in only $11,468 in revenues and booked a $36.4-million loss.

Marex.com offers itself as the internet place to transact business for the 33,000 suppliers and boat builders in the highly fragmented recreational marine industry. Marex.com makes money off of listing and transaction fees. The challenge is getting industry players to adopt e-procurement. A major worry for Marex.com: Those players starting their own online ordering systems.

Miller says the company will focus this year on signing up more customers and getting existing ones to use the service more. The top 200 recreational marine companies account for most of the business, so Marex.com will target them. Meanwhile, the now 93-employee company is pushing into the commercial maritime business under founder David Schwedel, who is chairman, chief strategic officer and chief executive officer.

To take the company forward, Miller plans to rely on the intangibles that don't show up on a resume. "We're in uncharted waters," she says. But "I am by nature a very driven person and a very positive person. I think I'm living up to the challenge I set for myself."

Shunning Dot-coms

Paul Robinson
President -- NetByTel, Boca Raton
For a lift: Listens to Steve Martin recordings.
Business heroes: Netscape founder Jim Clark and Dell Computer founder Michael Dell.
Pastimes: Golf, tennis.

Just because Paul Robinson had the idea for NetByTel while running a dot-com and founded it to write applications for dot-coms doesn't mean he's after dot-com business anymore. "We're certainly not focused on dot-coms," Robinson says. The simple reason: "Our apps are still working. They're not," he says, referring to all those failing dot-coms. Using software from Boston-based SpeechWorks, NetByTel lets companies cut call-center costs by replacing people with a voice-recognition system.

The 42-year-old Robinson has had an eclectic career. After majoring in computer science and marketing at the University of Pittsburgh, he went into 10 different businesses, including computer stores, a medical imaging operation, a call center and a dot-com, Wholesell.com. He couldn't put Wholesell.com's phone number in his dot-com advertisements because he couldn't justify the cost of staffing a call center.

NetByTel was started to help companies in a similar situation. But with dot-coms proving poor clients, these days Robinson most publicizes a different customer -- Delray Beach-based Office Depot, which pays NetByTel per transaction. Office Depot reports it saves up to 87% in customer order costs by using NetByTel's system.

Callers to Office Depot's toll-free line hear: "I can recognize spoken words as well as the buttons on your telephone keyboard." Indeed, Robinson says, the system can recognize 114 ways to say yes and no. Callers can opt for a human any time.

Robinson raised $10 million to get NetByTel started. He was looking to close on $15 million to $20 million in February, with profitability forecast for 2002. Then he won't have to focus on a business he doesn't much enjoy. "We'll be out of the fund-raising business. Thank heaven."

The 4-1-1 on 401(k)s

Fred Barstein
Chief executive officer -- 401KExchange.com, Lake Worth
Recreation: Marathon runner.
Family: Wife, Diane; daughters, Rebecca, 11, and Sachi, 8.
Background:
A Yeshiva University-educated lawyer, Barstein has
worked for Reed Elsevier and other major names in legal publishing.

Unlike a lot of dot-coms, Fred Barstein's started as a
viable, revenue-producing business independent of the internet. He adopted the 401K-Exchange.com name when he realized he could use the internet to make his offline 401(k) information business into an online lead generator. Even so, among venture capitalists these days, "It's not so great to have 'exchange' and 'dot-com' in our name," Barstein says.

Nonetheless, Barstein recently sewed up $3 million in venture capital funding. He plans to use it to persuade more brokers, financial planners and benefits consultants to use 401KExchange.com to get quotes on providing 401(k)s for employers. Most employers who use the service have under $10 million in plan assets. The automation cuts the cost of responding for the providers, who pay a percentage to 401KExchange.com. The company also positions itself as a kind of J.D. Power of the 401(k) industry. It surveys employers about the service they get from providers and then charges the providers for access to the research.

The 5-year-old company focuses on the smallest companies, which represent the largest market, with 450,000 companies and $500 billion in total assets. For larger companies, its utility can be questioned. "I'm not that convinced it's always that easy to figure out an employer's need by filling out some information on a form and blasting it to the planet," says Brad Ball, national sales manager for SunTrust Retirement Services, which used 401KExchange.com.

The company is the latest in Barstein's career as a new-product development guy. He founded a customized newsletter service for lawyers, for example. The 48-year-old will move 401KExchange.com into helping companies with enrolling and educating plan members. You won't see him run from the "exchange" and "dot-com" in his company's name. "We're sort of like Popeye," he says. "I am what I am."

Labor of Love

Michael Davis
Chief executive officer -- eAngler, Tampa
Favorite quarry: Redfish and snook.
Family: Wife, Tina; sons, Paul, 11,
Danny, 9; and daughter, Kayla, 2.
Fishing fact: Florida leads the nation in fishing license sales.

Figure out how to get paid for doing what you love, the common career advice goes, and you're on your way. Michael Davis figured it out in 1999 when he launched the eAngler.com fishing e-commerce site.

The Orlando native has loved to fish since the first time he put a hook in the water at age 5 off New Smyrna Beach. In his 30s, while chief financial officer for a St. Petersburg tech company, Bay Data Consultants, he took up competitive fishing. Ravenous for fishing information and top-quality products, he learned that 50 million U.S. anglers spend $40 billion per year on the sport. "I always knew it was big," Davis says. "I didn't realize how big it was."

So he quit Bay Data to create eAngler. The operation books guides and travel, sells tackle and offers loads of fishing information.

In 2000, eAngler's first full year, 3 million people visited the site. Davis expects the 30-employee company to be profitable in 2002. He won't disclose revenues. In projections made early last year, Davis anticipated nearly $8 million in revenues for 2000, but that assumed 8.2 million visitors.

Still, sporting goods e-tailing has a bright future, says Dan Head, e-commerce executive with Sports-
Line. Sport enthusiasts demand a selection that free-standing stores can't meet. And sporting goods e-tailers don't face credible competition from any nationwide brick-and-mortar power.

Ahead, Davis wants to broaden eAngler's offerings. A catalog went out early this year. Business-to-business services are in development. He opened a traditional store in North Carolina last year.

Combining a love and a career has its price. Davis spent many weekends on the water before eAngler. Now, "I'm lucky if I get out once a month," he says. "It's just killing me."

'Enterprising' Venture

Dave Goodis
Chief executive officer -- Revelex Corp., Boca Raton
Past job: Ski patrol in his native Canada.
New pastime: Diving.
Recent trip: Brussels to sign up Swiss Air, Sabena Air and 10 other regional European airlines.

Promotional materials for Dave Goodis' Revelex travel auction service advise potential customers to forget Captain Kirk and think Captain Picard. The pitch was an intricate play on Priceline.com's use of actor William Shatner as spokesman for that site's travel services. The message: Revelex, like Picard, is The Next Generation.

Goodis, 32, headed corporate development at Shochet Securities, a Miami-based discount brokerage, when he got the idea for Revelex. The Nasdaq system -- a continuous double auction in which both seller and buyer can see the bidding and decide whether to pounce on a deal -- struck him as good for transacting more than just stocks. He settled on the most liquid internet market: Travel. "No one in the world is doing what we're doing," Goodis says.

Revelex.com launched hotel room bidding in September, added car rental bidding in February and is working on flight, cruise and event ticketing bidding. Most users are leisure travelers. Goodis hopes to get more agents to use the site. Revelex doesn't charge buyers; it takes a commission from sellers.

Goodis forecasts a profit in 2002. But to get there, he needs to raise capital. More power, Scotty.