BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : SEPTEMBER 27, 1999 ISSUE
COVER STORY -- E.BIZ -- THE E.BIZ 25 Pehong Chen PEHONG CHEN BROADVISION INC. Position: Chairman and CEO Contribution: Pioneered off-the-shelf software for transforming Web sites into e-stores. Ambition: To make the online shopping experience so easy that anyone could do it. If he's lucky and works really hard at it, Pehong Chen has the opportunity to become for electronic commerce what McDonald's Corp.'s (MCD) Ray Kroc was to hamburgers. Like Kroc, Chen took a concept that had been around for a while and figured out how to make the market explode. E-commerce software sold by his Silicon Valley startup, BroadVision Inc. (BVSN), has the potential of helping cybershops worldwide match McDonald's claims of billions and billions served. Never mind fast food. This is fast software. In the early days of e-commerce, companies typically cobbled together their own technology for selling things online--a process that could take months. BroadVision's software, first released in 1995, allows Web sites to get their virtual cash registers up and running in as little as seven weeks. And, while BroadVision has plenty of competition now, one of its advantages is that its software keeps things simple for shoppers, too. ''Our goal is to automate [shopping for] my mother-in-law,'' says Chen, BroadVision's 41-year-old founder and CEO. He is already automating a ton of Web sites--300 so far, including everything from Home Depot Inc. (HD) to Hershey Foods Corp. (HSY) The past year has been a whopper. The Redwood City (Calif.) company's sales rose 95% in the first half of 1999, to $41.9 million. And things only look to get better now that e-business is really taking off. Forrester Research Inc. says worldwide online sales will reach $3.2 trillion by 2003. ''Our biggest challenge is that there are only 24 hours in a day,'' Chen says. ''There's so much business out there it's incredible.'' Now, that's cooking. By Timothy J. Mullaney _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP					RELATED ITEMS The e.biz 25: Masters of the Web Universe COVER IMAGE: The e.biz 25 Commentary: The Great Equalizer? Not by a Long Shot TABLE: Who's Lagging in the Net Age [empire builders] Jeffrey P. Bezos AMAZON.COM INC. Stephen M. Case AMERICA ONLINE INC. Timothy A. Koogle YAHOO! INC. [the innovators] Louis H. Borders WEBVAN GROUP INC. Jay S. Walker PRICELINE.COM Margaret C. Whitman EBAY INC. Glen Meakem FREE MARKETS ONLINE INC. James H. Clark MYCFO INC. Christos M. Cotsakos E*TRADE GROUP INC. [bankrollers] Masayoshi Son SOFTBANK CORP., JAPAN Robert C. Kagle BENCHMARK CAPITAL Lawton W. Fitt GOLDMAN SACHS & CO. L. John Doerr KLEINER PERKINS CAUFIELD & BYERS   Bernard Arnault LVMH MOET HENNESSY LOUIS VUITTON   [the visionaries] Mary G. Meeker MORGAN STANLEY DEAN WITTER John Hagel III MCKINSEY & CO. William Joy SUN MICROSYSTEMS [the architects] Louis V. Gerstner Jr. IBM CORP. Pehong Chen BROADVISION INC. David C. Peterschmidt INKTOMI INC. Kevin J. O'Connor DOUBLECLICK Ellen M. Hancock EXODUS COMMUNICATIONS [the pace setters] David S. Pottruck CHARLES SCHWAB CORP. John T. Chambers CISCO SYSTEMS Michael S. Dell DELL COMPUTER INTERACT E-Mail to Business Week Online

Copyright 1999, Bloomberg L.P. Terms of Use   Privacy Policy