From $80 to $80 million in a few 'easy' steps

This Tuesday, Apr. 20, Chan Suh, the founder of Agency.com came to a Morse master's tea. Through a combination of luck and skill, the creator of Time, Inc.'s Pathfinder site founded his own company, which helps other organizations utilize the Net, with $80 and in just a few years turned it into an $80 million firm with 560 employees in 12 locations worldwide.

He claims his success is due in part to the "client-centered team approach" where people with a variety of specialities work together rather than being compartmentalized. Additionally, he claims to have "certain values that go above and beyond our revenue goals."

Recent projects include Texaco and Compaq, but their Agency.com's first venture was a web site for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, which was a "raving success," capitalizing on the college students who visited the site as soon as it was put up and came back often.

Suh said that what kept his company going was a "common vision," though at times it was "almost impossible" for him and his partner Kyle Shanon. Part of that vision was a motto "to figure out what sucks and don't do it." He discounted the power of competitors such as Razorfish— saying of their motto, "I don't know what it means"—and IBM—likening their web presences to crediting phone companies with corporate existence.

For Suh, banner advertisements "suck," but he had mixed feelings about that type of advertising. While initially claiming they should be abolished, later in the talk he recognized that some advertising was needed. Suh's envisions an alternative to banners—a new form of advertising, such as a project to link businesses, like the new new project between British Airways and Amazon.com. When websurfers buy tickets at British Airways, they can also buy tourguides and other pertinent books from Amazon.com. At the same time, if a certain user buys many books on one particular country, he will be informed of any special fairs to that region. "It's a very simple kind of 'duh' idea," Suh said. Another example of advertising he likes was a Timex clock that was on the Vibe web site that linked to the Timex site.

Suh is the sort of customer that Amazon.com lives for, who, regardless of price, utilizes Amazon.com's services simply because the web-based bookseller's computers know his multiple addresses, his friend's birthdays, even his books preferences. He acknowledged, though, that some Net shoppers are bargain hunters, and that the Net might be to plane tickets as supermarkets were to dog food, where inferior brands deluge the market, but brand loyalty reamins critical.

In any case, Suh complained that there are "hundreds of things" that he would like to do, but he simply can't with the resources at his disposal. In his opinion, there is still opportunity for entrepreneurs to make it with adequate ingenuity.

While Suh arrived at Yale with an inconsistent vision, he did bring along Yalie Colin Savage, DC '95—Agency.com's third employee. Asked if his education was of any use in his profession, he said it had, citing examples such as a physics course which helped in "looking at complexity." He added that in his industry, "You see a lot of people with a background with semiotics picking around," and his education helped him out there.

For more on the debate about whether a college education is worthwhile in computer science, see Salon.

—By Kushal Dave