August - 1999 - issue > Cover Feature

After a meeting with Naveen Jain, one comes away trying to shake off the shards of his explosive drive and aggression. He loves to tell everybody that along with InfoSpace.com, there were 30 other companies in the same business. Only four survived, and only one has gone public. InfoSpace.com is the one, of course.

InfoSpace.com is a provider of private label solutions for content and commerce to Web sites and Internet appliances, focusing on real-world content such as yellow pages, maps, classified ads, real-time stock quotes, sports and other information. In a March 1998 siliconindia story titled "Tired of Making Billions for Bill," Jain said that there is nothing to stop InfoSpace from becoming a $100 million revenue company within four years. About one year and the addition of '.com' to the company's name later, InfoSpace.com is well on its way -- it went public in early 1999 and has a current market cap of about $2.3 billion.

Jain owned 47.6 percent of the company before selling off about $201 million worth of shares for hard cash. Some of the money went into an ostensibly large house that he bought for $15 million in a Seattle area suburb. Consider this, however: Infospace.com is in the red by nearly $10 million. Even then Jain insists the company's stock is grossly undervalued. If Jain wants to make a directory service into a seemingly viable business -- he must take it forward, and we expect that he will. "We still have a lot of work to do here," says Jain.