Etinerary adjustments

By Scott Kirsner, Globe Staff, 7/3/2000

Tim Rowe, founder of the Cambridge Incubator, says that Etineraries, one of the incubator's earliest start-up ideas, isn't dead - it's just on hiatus.

The incubator has reduced Etineraries' expenditures to ''next to zero,'' Rowe says. But it's still looking for buyers or strategic partners interested in the company, which sought to provide online travel sites with ''enhanced itineraries.'' If a user booked a hotel room in San Francisco through the Sheraton Web site, for example, Etineraries would supply customized information on things to do in the Bay Area.

Etineraries had been run by Rowe's wife, Amy Rowe, a former McKinsey & Co. management consultant. Of the company's eight employees, five have found other roles at the incubator, and three have moved on.

''While we know that not every business we back is going to be a home run, it is painful to see any business ramp down in this way,'' Tim Rowe writes in an e-mail. ''As a very early stage investor, we expect a certain percentage of our investments not to work out. If everything always goes great, (some) people would probably argue that we're being too conservative.''

Upwardly mobile

Also on the incubator front, Lobby7 Wireless will announce its launch this week. The ''wireless application strategy and solutions firm'' has been camping out in the still-under-construction I-Group Hotbank incubator in the Back Bay, but will move into its own space this fall.

Founded by five alumni of the Media Lab and the Sloan School at MIT, Lobby7 is named after the school's main entrance - Lobby Seven - on Mass. Ave. At MIT, the founders worked on projects like using WAP-enabled cell phones to schedule meetings with large groups of people and using Palms to tally purchases in a store and check out without a cashier.

''We learned that mobile computing is different,'' says Daniele de Francesco, a founder. ''It's not the Internet on cell phones. You have constraints on screen size, resolution, bandwidth. You want personalized push - things that interest you, because you're in a certain place, or it's a certain time of day.''

The company has already raised a few million in seed funding from I-Group Hotbank and Clarity Capital, a venture firm in Boston and London that focuses on wireless investments.

They'll return

his calls now

Former Wall Street Journal and Globe business reporter Jon Auerbach has joined venture capital firm Highland Capital Partners, as of mid-June. He's a principal - one notch below general partner - and he'll be exploring the possibility of opening a Highland office in Europe.

''We may open an office there, we may not,'' says Highland marketing chief Michael Gaiss. ''Jon's going to spend the next several months looking at the opportunity.''

Forrester West?

Cambridge's Forrester Research, located in the middle of the other big dig - Kendall Square - is also thinking about expansion.

Though company spokesman Mike Shirer says he'd be a wealthy man if you gave him a share of Forrester stock for every time he heard the rumor about a West Coast outpost, Forrester insiders say the decision is already made, and the only question is whether the Forrester presence will be in Silicon Valley or in San Francisco proper. Forrester already has satellite research centers in Amsterdam and London.

And now, this bulletin ...

Perpetually peppy serial entrepreneur Sung Park is preparing to shed his duties as CEO at Cambridge's Radio Active Media Partners to focus on a batch of new ventures.

Radio Active creates private-label Internet radio stations for customers like AltaVista and Barnes & Noble, and splits the revenue from advertising spots with them. Park says that while Radio Active's current channels are focused on music, the company is developing news, weather, and sports channels that should launch soon.

''We're working toward critical mass,'' says Park. ''Right now, we have 40 million potential listeners through our partnerships. When we have 100 million, that's when it becomes interesting to advertisers like Coke and GM.''

Park is in the early stages of launching three other companies - one in the music space - and says a search is under way for a new CEO at Radio Active.

Thriftiness is in

Running a frugal Net start-up seems to be the trendy thing this summer. Langley Steinert and Steven Kaufer, chairman and CEO, respectively, of Needham's TripAdvisor, are two adherents of this lower-profile mode of building a Web business.

TripAdvisor, a search service that collects and organizes information about travel destinations from trusted authorities (like Fodor's) as well as typical Net users, has just 12 employees. And most are software developers working on the product.

''Our burn rate is extremely low,'' says Steinert, who is also a partner at Boston's OneLiberty Ventures. TripAdvisor raised $1.3 million in February (most of it from OneLiberty), and sources say TripAdvisor could stretch that sum past the company's fall launch and into the middle of next year. Just to be safe, Steiner and Kaufer are signing term sheets on an additional $2 million, which should be announced any day now. The theory: Raise it before you need it.

TripAdvisor also won't make the mistake of trying to create its own destination site and then spending gobs of money attracting visitors.

''We want to provide informational services in the same way that Sabre provides transactional services,'' Steinert explains, ''through partners like America Online, Expedia, Yahoo, and Travelocity.'' Smart.

Espionage made easy

Corporate snooping has never been this simple. Harvard Business School-spawned start-up 3Plex.com, an online service for third-party logistics providers, has an office in a great location: on Mass. Ave, just outside of Harvard Square. But the glass walls of the converted retail space - it's right next door to Il Panino - might be too revelatory.

Walking by one evening, the lights had been left on in the company's main conference room. Whiteboards and easel pads - as well as paper taped to the walls - were in full view, exposing notes on things like ''obstacles'' and ''cost per truckload.'' Curtains would be a solid investment for a company that took in $15 million in venture capital in April.

Scott Kirsner is a contributing writer at Wired and Fast Company magazines. .