Sticking to The Business

We stayed focused on the needs of small business. We spend all of our time trying to understand what entrepreneurs are trying to accomplish on the Internet, and to service those needs. For example, when a small-business person types [into the search field] a toll-free number, they're looking to buy an 800 line, versus a consumer, who may be looking up an 800 number. Knowing who they are gives us tremendous advantage in figuring out what kind of results will be relevant to them.

How much did you have to spend for the work.com domain?

We bought it from Dow Jones for $400,000 in 2001, when it was an active site with traffic.

That's a lot better than the $7.5 million you paid for business.com.

The $7.5 million was a stock deal that we did in 2000 when Internet companies were fairly highly valued. When we did our refinancing in 2004, that stock was revalued and we redeemed it for $2 million in cash. So it was $2 million.

At one point your incubator, eCompanies, was seen as the poster child for dot-com excess. Now that the smoke has cleared, how do you evaluate its performance?