| Register/Subscribe Home |
|
|
ONLINE FEATURES
Book Reviews
BW Video
Columnists
Interactive Gallery
Newsletters
Past Covers
Philanthropy
Podcasts
Special Reports
BLOGS
Auto Beat
Bangalore Tigers
Blogspotting
Brand New Day
Byte of the Apple
Economics Unbound
Eye on Asia
Fine On Media
Green Biz
Hot Property
Investing Insights
Management IQ
NEXT: Innovation
NussbaumOnDesign
Tech Beat
Working Parents
TECHNOLOGY
J.D. Power Ratings
Product Reviews
Tech Stats
Wildstrom: Tech Maven
AUTOS
Home Page
Auto Reviews
Classic Cars
Car Care & Safety
Hybrids
INNOVATION
& DESIGN Home Page Architecture Brand Equity Auto Design Game Room SMALLBIZ Smart Answers Success Stories Today's Tip INVESTING Investing: Europe Annual Reports BW 50 S&P Picks & Pans Stock Screeners Free S&P Stock Report SCOREBOARDS Hot Growth 100 Mutual Funds Info Tech 100 S&P 500 B-SCHOOLS Undergrad Programs MBA Blogs MBA Profiles MBA Rankings Who's Hiring Grads | | JANUARY 3, 2001 MOVERS & SHAKERS By Lori Hawkins Can Judith Bitterli Establish a Beachhead for "eduCommerce"? Powered's CEO, a former Army parachutist, is fighting to prove that free online classes will make clients' sites sticky -- and her company profitable
But almost two decades later, Bitterli finds herself engaged in a type of combat. As chief executive of Powered Inc. in Austin, Tex., she's battling to establish a market for "eduCommerce" -- a kind of online education -- at a time when many Web-commerce companies are fighting for survival. Bitterli, 47, knows victory won't come easily. "We've been at this for 19 months, and the clock is ticking," she says. "To win, we have to execute flawlessly." Powered's goal is stickiness -- getting Internet customers to repeatedly return to a site and buy things -- and Bitterli believes the way to do that is to offer site visitors free learning. Powered creates online universities for such customers as Barnes&Noble.com, Dell Computer, and Jobs.com. Since its founding in May, 1999, Powered has created dozens of courses, from an examination of Shakespeare's tragedies to a primer on herb gardening to an introduction to software programming. CUSTOM CLASSES. Backed by $34 million in venture capital from investors that include Merrill Lynch, Barnes&Noble.com, and Impact Venture Partners, Powered has created online courses for 15 companies. In the first nine months of 2000, 350,000 students enrolled in the courses. Powered gets content for courses from both its clients and hired instructors. Site visitors can choose from a catalog of more than 200 courses or work with Powered to create customized lessons. Powered is paid for creating the university and the courses and for maintenance. The average contract is $230,000, which includes five courses a month for one year. Barnes&Noble University works like this: Consumers register for classes -- such as yoga for novices, Italian for travelers, or an intro to Walt Whitman -- by giving their e-mail address. Students receive a Barnes&Noble mailbox that allows them to exchange e-mail with other students from the class roster. They also receive an online notebook and a Web calendar to keep track of when homework is due and when discussions will be held. Classes range from one-day live seminars to extended courses of up to 12 weeks. Students can show up any time during the week to get reading and homework assignments and to e-mail questions to the instructor. Educommerce is still a microscopic sliver of the online learning market, which Merrill Lynch estimates will grow from $3.6 billion in 1999 to $25.3 billion in 2003. And Powered's competition is coming from two directions: Companies are creating their own online courses to draw new customers to their Web sites, and other startups, such as DigitalThink of San Francisco, are jumping into the fray. Meanwhile, some analysts still aren't convinced there's much of a market to brawl over. Bitterli "is in the difficult position of having to prove the concept," says Robert Hertzberg, an analyst with Jupiter Research. "The truth is, there's not a lot of established demand, and the value of what they do is very difficult to measure." BOSS OR BUST. But Bitterli is accustomed to proving herself. An Air Force brat and the oldest of five children, she learned to adapt quickly to new surroundings as her family moved. After high school, she enrolled in the College of Charleston to study political science, and she later transferred to Fayetteville State University. To help pay for business school, she joined the Army in 1976 and was among the first wave of women to go through airborne training. She chose the Army over the Air Force, she says, because it had better weapons, and she wanted to jump out of planes. "My God, Judith," her father said after learning how his only daughter was making a living. "I thought you were the one with the common sense." She left with the rank of first lieutenant after concluding that being banned from combat would keep her from advancing. "Because of my gender I could only go so far, and if I couldn't be the boss, I didn't want to play anymore," she says. She quickly found a new world with no such limitations -- the fledgling PC industry. She joined Control Data Corp., a Los Angeles software services company that competed with IBM, and learned the art of making a sale. She went on to CompuAdd, an Austin PC maker that gave Dell a run for its money in the late 1980s. After a stint as vice-president for the Americas at Power Computing, the feisty Apple clone company that was bought out by Steve Jobs in 1997, Bitterli landed at Micron Electronics in Boise, Idaho, as vice-president and general manager of Web operations. There, she and a group of colleagues came up with the idea that would later become Powered. NOT HARVARD. The idea sprang from Micron's efforts to find a competitive advantage over Dell in the direct-PC market. Bitterli, Mike Rosenfelt, Bill Goins, and Mark Gonzales built a program of free online courses on computers and computing for both new and potential customers. In just two years, free education helped Micron move nearly half of its PC sales to the Web. And while Micron's customers learned, they came back to the site more often, stayed for hours per week instead of minutes, and spent more money on hardware, software, and other products offered in conjunction with the courses. In May, 1999, Rosenfelt and Gonzales left Micron to start notHarvard.com (which was later changed to the more staid Powered). Four others, including Bitterli, joined them shortly thereafter. Gonzales was the first CEO, and Bitterli took the helm when the company received its first funding in October, 1999. Friends and colleagues say Bitterli is just the person to turn an unconventional idea into a solid business. A chronic perfectionist who works 90-hour weeks, she is known both for her unflinching directness and her ability to put workers at ease. To allay fears about recent dot-com meltdowns, she has held face-to-face meetings with every one of the 130 people on Powered's staff. And she impressed employees at the company's holiday party by making a point of talking to every spouse and significant other. Colleagues cite her flexibility -- an employee's baby crawled around the office for five months until child care could be found -- as the quality that has engendered a deep sense of loyalty among employees. "She's one of those rare people who exudes such confidence that you would follow her anywhere," says Kenneth Plunk, Powered's vice-president for product development. Now she has to prove that paying customers will follow her, too.  Hawkins covers companies in Texas for Business Week  | | |
 Copyright 2001 , by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.Terms of Use | Privacy Policy |
Printer-Friendly Version
