What Happened to Yahoo!'s Millionaires?
Aug. 26 -- — Tucked away in a sleepy one-story office complex in Mountain View, Calif., Trevor Blackwell is trying to get a robot to walk.
A faceless, armless 5½-foot-tall contraption named Bottom — powered by an air compressor and guided by a software program — stands for two minutes, subtly adjusting its balance. Then it keels over, hissing and gasping as it goes.
Getting this wobbly droid simply to stand up straight is a challenge, but Blackwell is optimistic. "By late next year I'm hoping to get this to walk into a kitchen and make a cheese sandwich," he says. Seriously.
His company, Anybots, aims to produce general-purpose robots for home use. His vision: A few years from now humanoid robots — remotely controlled by joystick jockeys at call centers in low-wage countries like China — will prepare your lunch, take out the garbage, do the laundry. "What I really wanted was something that, if it worked, it would change the world," he says earnestly.
Blackwell, 33, already has played a bit part in changing the Internet world. In 1995, while working on his Ph.D. thesis in computer science at Harvard, he helped launch a startup called Viaweb that set up online storefronts for retailers. In June 1998 he hit the jackpot — the 20-employee company got acquired by Yahoo! for $49 million in stock. Blackwell's share was "in the low eight digits," he says.
Yahoo!, priced at $158 when it bought Viaweb, had slid to $20 by the time Blackwell left the company in May 2001. But along the way he cashed out enough of his "purple dollars" (purple is a Yahoo! signature color) to pay for the robot venture. He rents 3,800 square feet of office space at a postcrash $12 a year per square foot, has two employees and is looking to hire a few more. He figures he will put $1 million of his own money into the venture before looking for other investors.
What Happened to the Wealth
During the bubble, deals like the Viaweb purchase happened almost daily. From 1998 to 2000 North American tech companies spent $1.66 trillion on acquisitions, says Broadview International. They paid, for the most part, with the funny money of their own inflated stock.
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