@LARGE
Sharing the wealthBy Scott Kirsner
Globe Staff, 07/17/2000Was Mae West right when she said, ''Too much of a good thing can be wonderful''?
It's no secret that charitable giving hasn't been keeping pace with the explosion of net worth in the New England high-tech universe. But will two nonprofit organizations with the same goal - convincing company founders to donate a small slice of equity before their firms take off - solve the problem faster, or create confusion and turf battles?
We'll find out later this year. Larry Weber, chairman of the Massachusetts Interactive Media Council, has been laying the groundwork for something called Founder's Shares, which he plans to unveil in September.
''The idea is to give early, at a time when it's not painful,'' Weber explains. ''Fifty thousand shares of restricted stock isn't worth anything [to a young company].'' But after that company is sold or goes public, it can be incredibly valuable.
Weber says the money that Founder's Shares generates will be used to address ''digital divide issues,'' and that the actual grant-making will be done by a partner foundation - not by the MIMC. Weber has had conversations with successful entrepreneurs like Bo Peabody and venture capital firms like Greylock and Charles River about getting involved.
Until last week, Weber wasn't aware of the Entrepreneur's Foundation of New England, a nascent organization pursuing a similar strategy in Boston, and the catalyst behind EFNE wasn't aware of Founder's Shares.
EFNE is based on a model created by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Gib Myers, who in 1998 started the Entrepreneur's Foundation (www.the-ef.org). The foundation asked for - and received - $100,000 worth of stock from participating companies, with plans to funnel the proceeds to ''social entrepreneurs'' working in the fields of education and youth development.
So far, the Entrepreneur's Foundation on the West Coast has enlisted the participation of 70 companies, whose one-time donations are today worth roughly $10 million. And companies don't just fork over a piece of equity, but their employees also participate in community service activities, such as beach clean-ups, blood drives, tutoring,
and home-building.
Boston attorney Terry Philip Segal, a well-regarded litigator at Duane, Morris & Hecksher, wants to bring the concept east. He has set up an office in Lexington, and plans to devote about half of his time to the organization. Already, a Brookline start-up called MyStockOptions.com has agreed to participate.
Both groups have good intentions. ''This is the greatest accumulation of wealth in the history of America,'' Weber says. ''But philanthropy is lagging.'' Will the tech community embrace Founder's Shares, the Entrepreneur's Foundation of New England, or both? We'll see.
Culinary combat
The temperature is heating up to a broil in the competition between the two Web sites that offer online restaurant reservations in Boston, Foodline.com and OpenTable.com.
Both sites are struggling to prove their utility, and they're facing a chicken-and-egg problem. In order to get a lot of swank restaurants signed up, they have to guarantee the restaurateurs that they'll deliver a large number of reliable customers. And in order to attract customers, they need to offer customers a wide variety of top-notch dining spots.
Neither site has completely solved the problem yet.
Right now, Foodline.com has the lead, with 16 restaurants to OpenTable.com's eight. OpenTable says it will be adding another dozen soon, including Mistral, the Federalist, and Bomboa. Within the next few weeks, Foodline will add Aujourd'hui, 75 Chestnut, the Bombay Club, and six others, maintaining its lead.
Both companies are vying to offer reservations at some of Boston's best-known restaurants, among them Radius, Salamander, and L'Espalier. The rivalry is so intense that even poaching isn't out of bounds: OpenTable managed to lure Sandrine's, a French restaurant in Harvard Square, away from Foodline.
''The product is just more advanced, and often, after restaurants sign up with Foodline, they switch over to us,'' boasts OpenTable's Regan Daniels. Foodline counters that it has features OpenTable can't match, and notes it has snagged restaurants from OpenTable in Seattle and San Francisco.
OpenTable.com (which, in the interest of disclosure, has a partnership with Boston.com, the Globe's Web site) is based in San Francisco. Foodline was founded in Boston early last year, and while the corporate headquarters have since moved to New York, the 27-person technology and editorial group, run by COO Tom Infantino, has remained in Boston. It's on the same Leather District block as Oskar's and Les Zygomates, both of which can be booked on Foodline.
Can you hear the knives being sharpened?
NextGen ESPN
Woburn's MyTeam.com, a Web site devoted to amateur sports, is about to announce a fusillade of online coverage - 3,000 games between now and Labor Day. MyTeam.com will provide live pictures, audiocasts, and streaming video from such events as the Little League World Series, the Amateur Athletic Union basketball championships and the US Olympic women's softball team's road to Sydney.
''This is the next generation of ESPN,'' says Jean McCormick, MyTeam's vice president of content. She should know; as a producer for the Bristol, Conn.-based cable station, she won seven Emmy awards.
MyTeam is hoping the online coverage will attract amateur athletes and coaches, who can schedule games, communicate with teammates, and buy supplies.
Wanna be a recruiter?
The people crunch in Boston's high-tech world has gotten so bad that Revenio, a Burlington firm that makes e-marketing software, isn't just paying referral bonuses to its own employees who bring in friends and former colleagues - it's paying anybody who helps the company fill a position.
''If you refer us someone we hire, we'll send you a check,'' says Revenio founder and CEO Andy Payne, formerly VP of technology at OpenMarket. ''I've got my contractor, who is putting a closet in our master bedroom, looking for people. We haven't hired anybody from him yet, but he's looking.''
Payne's contractor can look forward to $2,000 for the first referral, $3,000 for every referral thereafter.
Payne says that Revenio has paid out more than $100,000 in referral bonuses to employees and ''friends of the company,'' and that 62 percent of the company's 110 employees wound up there as the result of a personal referral.
The company is planning to grow to 150 employees by early 2001; its product, Dialog, will hit the market this fall.
Scott Kirsner is a contributing writer at Wired and Fast Company magazines.