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Interview day saw Hans Koch, the co-founder of Owners.com,celebrating with partner Jack Reibling their San Francisco"for sale by owner" home-listing firm's thirdanniversary as a Web service. A three-tier cake there was not--but"donut holes in the kitchen" were available for thetaking. Isn't humbleness in the face of a huge near-futureendearing?
Although he's proud of the kudos Owners.com has received(being recognized as one of PC Magazine's "Top 100Web sites" from fall 1997 to mid-1998 and all), Koch's egois in check. "We had five people [he now employs 30], and werebeing considered on the same level as Amazon.com," he says ofthe PC Magazine honor. "We don't have [their]resources, [but] there continues to be a lot of pressure to performat the level of our publicly traded counterparts with [huge]staffs."
Koch's been into business since age 6, when he sold seedsaround his neighborhood. "That company wasn't big,"he says. "I think I made $1.25 that summer." Hisfascination for real estate began at age 9, when a year ofhome-schooling coincided with his parents building an addition totheir house. The curious youngster hung out with thecontractors--observing, making suggestions. Throughout high schooland college, Koch volunteered to help planning and developmentcommittees in his southwest Michigan hometown with real estateprojects. He honed his entrepreneurial skills with a car-detailingbusiness that helped pay for college.
After gaining post-college exposure to Silicon Valley highs andlows while working for "one of the biggest retail developersin the country," Koch and engineering buff Reibling wereinspired to make their mark. They sought to replace what realestate agents saw as their primary value to the consumer withhome-selling tools and data available online.
Owners.com, which profits from home-selling packages andtransaction fees, debuted on the Web in 1996. Working 150-hourweeks, Koch and Reibling, both 30, built the company to its currentstate: a listing database of nearly 250,000 homes with a growthrate of 400 percent over last year.
Says Koch, "While [real estate agents] may be, have been,will be, upset with [us] bringing services directly to the consumerat a discount, the consumers benefit. If we've shaken thingsup, well then, good."
It's A Small World
It was on a (then) coveted Atari computer that Eric Silbersteinwrote the environmental program Pollution Simulator in the fourthgrade. "I shared a [school] bazaar booth with somebody sellingcomic books," he says. "He did much better." But at23, we can assure you Silberstein's now out-grossing thesuperheroes peddler. Direct from Cambridge, Massachusetts, thisHarvard grad has his sights set on making his business, IdiomTechnologies Inc., the Web-globalization company.
"In the old days, if you wanted to do business globally,you had to set up partnerships, send people there and get familiarwith regulations overseas," says Silberstein. "Today, youcan set up a Web site and [compete globally] with almost no effort.Idiom is going to be the company that helps get you to thatposition."
The 23-employee business offers software and services to helpe-commerce ventures do business internationally. Its flagshipproduct, WorldServer, lets companies create and maintainhuman-translated multilingual and multiregional versions ofsites.
Now Idiom, the result of early in-depth meetings withco-founders at the Harvard cafeteria and $500,000 inSilberstein-family bucks (plus additional venture capital), is setto grow its technology and senior management team, which includesco-founders Ken Shan and Susan Cheng. Together, the three arepoised to devise new ways of improving the content user-interfaceof global e-commerce sites.
On working from the ground up, Silberstein says, "Youdon't have to figure everything out [in the verybeginning]--just a tiny portion to wedge in there and moveforward."
Contact Sources
Idiom Technologies Inc., (617) 354-1822, http://www.idiomtech.com
Owners.com, (800) 273-7322, http://www.owners.com
