Geeks on the hotseat

>> The Mirror orders dot-com hotshots to justify their behaviour

by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Let it be said that not all of us are happy with this unlikely New World where geeks are the new rock stars. We object that high-tech employers ignore the rightfully low status of the scientifically inclined that the great community carefully established by shunning them in high school. Yet dot-com firms have insisted on making geeks rich and almost hip, while the dinner-party chattering classes tread water in the wired age.

But thankfully, high-tech share prices have recently slid like an eight year old down a waterslide. Local tech-savvy parvenus and arrivistes and over-celebrated young millionaire hotshots suddenly faced their long overdue comeuppance as the market body-slammed cocky geniuses with a delicious justice.

Like a one-man war-crimes tribunal, I went out to scrutinize some of the city's high-tech big rollers, who made folks like myself feel so inadequate, and hopefully watch them squirm and justify their now-expired faddishness. Not all of them, I regret to report, are crying uncle.

SureFired Up

My father used to holler at Rory Olson. He'd cajole and counsel the young misfit to straighten his ways, and not to drink milk or not be a mama's boy. That was even before a 16-year-old Olson rebelled further by moving into a $220 apartment in Côte-des-Neiges, getting a job packing pyjamas for $90 a week and attempted to become a rock singer.

Nowadays Olson, CEO of SureFire Commerce, spends his days with an HDTV tuned to CNBC in an office in Alexis Nihon fitted with an overstuffed leather couch and a good view of the mountain.

Olson was a natural first stop on my tour because of our clan-based affiliation: our fathers banged out stories together for the scandal sheet Midnight in the '50s. Olson's father Norman, a Damon Runyanesque character, was a professional wrestler as a teen who went on to write a well-paid syndicated gossip column, collecting information by strolling into Mob-filled nightclubs and approaching tough guys with his copyright greeting, "So who'd'ya hate?" The senior Olson went on to set up one of the first PR agencies with the legendary columnist Al Palmer and later brought the roller derby to town.

Olson's own colourful youth ended when he ditched his rock dreams at 21. "I remember feeling really bad about that at the time," he says. After bagging a Commerce degree at Concordia, Olson kept his ear to the ground and nose to the grindstone, starting in commercial real estate during the '80s land boom, jumping into the early world of long-distance reselling and then buying an early Internet provider, which became TotalNet.

In the comfort of his bonhomie and soft couch, Olson--who readily admits that he knows relatively little about technical computer stuff--proves difficult to ambush. I complain that his kind have disenfranchised the heavy-lifters of the world and dispossessed workers with no inclination to geekdom. He listens intently, furrows his brow, shrugs and gently shakes his head. "No, no no, it's not that at all," he says simply, and smoothly guides the conversation elsewhere.

But Olson has felt some rare pain, recently seeing shares of his SureFire Commerce plummet from a recent high of $16 to somewhere near $3. I look for a sign of the meltdown, maybe a secretary storming out, or bailiffs at the reception desk. Instead the brass flash their pearly whites as if they were doing weather on Global News. His top-level colleagues, who include lawyer/former sports talk-radio host Mitch Garber, casually stroll in and out. High-fives are thrown.

As Olson walks through the office, the fast-multiplying staff peek over their office dividers. Some wave and smile. Coders scowl as if suffering from a pinched sciatic nerve. Several floors below in a secure, temperature-controlled room, blue plastic computers the size of coke machines process the billion dollars of online credit-card transactions his company administers per year.

If he seems insufficiently mournful in the dot-com graveyard, Olson says he has a reason. "Ours is a better company today at $3 than it was at $10 because today we have specific deals. We are no longer just the glint in someone's eye or an expectation of something that's going to be," he says. His company has $30-million to blow and is kicking tires. "The landscape has become littered with opportunities, companies that can't make it need help and we have the ability and advantage of going out there."

When I get home and look at my notes, it betrays the failure of my prosecution, as the page is full of quotes like, "When I see a squeegie kid, I think, 'Hey that could have been me.'" Elsewhere I've scribbled: "Loves Montreal, will never leave." A few days later, the son of a PR guru proves I'm not the only journalist he can charm. The 42-year-old is splashed all over the Gazette Society page with his reformed rock band, for an event that raised $120,000 for charity.

Fitting booth of the future

As the window behind her reveals a fast-darkening sky that eventually matches her black-on-black outfit, 40-somethingish CEO Nicole Guay talks about the bright future of her MyVirtualModel.com. "We've created the market," she says of her service, which allows online shoppers to create cartoon likenesses of themselves. Using the images, surfers can click on clothing which then pops onto the model, allowing them to simulate the experience of trying on clothing.

But I'm a hostile witness. I've never considered buying clothes online and on the rare occasions I shop for threads, I caress the material, sniff it and bicker with the Salvation Army cashier over price.

But Guay's company, owned in part by the Caisse de Dépôt, has 290 workers servicing contracts with J.C. Penny and Land's End among others. As she speaks, fashionably blasé young workers sip on microbrews and pizza provided free on Friday afternoons.

The customers are apparently less hip. Guay says that of the two million online surfers who have created personalized models many are "special-sized people." But then again, they're offered a limited selection of body types that include four hairstyles and two eye shapes. When I later create my own likeness, it seems a malicious caricature, nastily accurate except for a set of puzzlingly chubby hips the likes of which I've never seen on a human.

Such complaints--and she's heard a few by now--don't bug Guay. "That's the price of being an innovator," she says, referring to "first-market advantage." In other words, being the first among 40 competitors in the field of model-sizing means that she'll get the customers first and perfect the product later.

As a privately held company, Guay is not compelled to discuss profits, even if there were any. Instead she prefers to talk of her first experience with a "personal shopper" in a New York boutique. "That's what I want to convey--a special, personalized experience," she says. With the help of her company, which is located on Sherbrooke E. near Lafontaine Park, we'll soon be able to have our models walking and talking and flirting with others as they stroll through Web sites, she says.

I find myself nodding a lot as Guay makes rapid-fire points which tend to start with the phrase, "Pretty soon, we'll be able to--" It's possible that the product is an ingenious gizmo that nobody will be able to do without. It's not possible, however, that free workplace beer for techie geeks is a good idea.

Mamma searches

"I'm barely a millionaire," says 26-year-old Park Extension native Herman Tumurcuoglu, sitting at a huge boardroom table as the skylights over the Old Montreal HQ of Mamma.com warm the homey tones of the Ikea-like office.

Tumurcuoglu, a likable, slightly melancholy dark-eyed youth recites his thumbnail bio: Educated at Lucien Pagé High, Con U and finally Carleton, where his MA thesis on marketing on the Net gave him the idea to set up a meta-search Web site. After a couple of lean years, during which his Turkish-Armenian parents kept pushing him to ditch his plan and get a normal job, Tumurcuoglu eventually created what he says is now the "most visited site out of a Canadian venture." More importantly, he got his parents to admit they were wrong to doubt him.

His "mother of all search engines" makes cash, he explains, as the sites that come up in the search results pay him every time you click them. Before the high-tech meltdown, the company raised $10-million in capital and spun off two thirds of its equity to Intasys, a local high-tech incubator for another $27-mil. Since then, Intasys, whose shares not long ago went for $13 (U.S.) on the Nasdaq can now be had for under a buck.

Tumurcuoglu, who admits that his fortune is sagging with the slump, has no girlfriend, but at least scored a hot sports car and a high-priced condo at the top of Atwater. When I mention the lingering dissatisfaction some new millionaires feel, often known as "sudden wealth syndrome" he immediately answers: "Yes, I think I have it. The money makes no difference. What are you going to do with it?"

I point out the possibilities for instant and non-stop gratification of any impulse or desire--for example, aimlessly touring over the city in helicopter.

"Too dangerous," he answers. "A couple of years ago I had a bus pass and came to work. I was the only one here on a Saturday. Now I drive my car to work and I'm still all alone here on a Saturday."

Messengers RIP

Although he's a competitive bicyclist, Tommy Petrogiannis might be advised to avoid the bicycle couriers he crosses. Those who deliver important contracts might not cotton to the fact that he's marketing a computer technology that could permanently lighten their load.

The 35-year-old Snowdown native-born son of Greek restaurateurs invented a program that allows documents to be signed by hand over the Internet without risk of fraud. Any tampering, even deleting a single space, will void the document.

Unlike the other dot-com gurus, Petrogiannis' Silanis Inc. disproves the notion that e-firms need groovy office spaces. His office is a windowless box inside a dreary space on Côte-de-Liesse, decorated blandly with laminated advertisements for his company.

Petrogiannis started as a kid dissecting machines, went to Westhill High, delivered newspapers, worked at Wendy's, got a degree in classical guitar, did Pure and Applied Science in CEGEP, worked at Compaq and Matrox. The string was broken when he was invited to bid on a contract to make a paperless signing program. He said he could do it for $85,000, his competitor offered to do it for $4-million.

Encouraged by the hope of scoring more such deals, for four years after 1992 Petrogiannis dropped out and lived on the cheap, trying to perfect his product and plan. In '96 he scored the first financing that would eventually open the door to a big contract with the U.S. military. "People were telling me, 'Don't even try, they're not going to give it to a Canadian.'"

After the Joint Chiefs of Staff gave him his deal, his workforce sprouted to 75 and is projected to be up to 200 next year at this time, thanks to the 95 per cent profit he makes on every sale. Petrogiannis, in his unassuming way, weaves a compelling tale of his ongoing business struggles. And like his fellow CEOs, he's diplomatically self-effacing about his technological knowledge, confessing only to being a "good generalist."

Before I leave, Petrogiannis explains that workers are hard to find and need to be lured with attractive packages and stock options. Who are these workers, I ask? He looks confused. Techies, obviously, who else? He means coders, electrical engineers, C++ experts, annoying guys who know how all that complicated stuff works. The future still belongs to the geeks. Meltdown or not, that part of the plan hasn't been cancelled.