10/05/98 WANT TO MAKE A SPLASH? GET STARS FOR YOUR BOARD

WANT TO MAKE A SPLASH? GET STARS FOR YOUR BOARD

THE COMPUTER INDUSTRY BREEDS HYPE, but certain players get all the attention. If you're not among the glamorous--say a Yahoo! or an Amazon.com--what do you do to get your share of the spotlight? Put together an all-star board.
That's what Lante Corp., a Chicago systems-integration and consulting firm, decided to do. Lante has been around for 14 years, helping customers from American Expess to Kraft Foods put together networked computer systems. But now it wants to stake out a leading role in the red-hot market for Internet and electronic-commerce consulting. So Lante President and founder Mark Tebbe called a few of his friends to serve on the board: Michael Dell, chairman of Dell Computer; Michael Maples, a former senior vice-president at Microsoft; Mort Meyerson, ex-CEO of Perot Systems and a former vice-chairman of giant Electronic Data Systems; and John Landry, once the top technologist at Lotus Development and now an adviser to IBM. These and four other high-technology luminaries have invested in Lante. As directors, they will actively advise the company--including steering it toward an eventual initial public offering. Then, Tebbe's friends may be amply rewarded.
EDITED BY AMY CORTESE