Seasoned executives take dot-bomb reins

August 13, 2001

BY MICHAEL KRAUSS

As a rebellious adolescent, I would ask my father, “What’s the difference between being young and being old?”

“Experience,” he would say.

I have to admit, as a kid, my father’s one-word answer used to puzzle me. As a teenager, I would wonder, “What could experience have possibly taught him over the years that was valuable?”

Something similar is happening today in the dot-com world. Terry Semel, CEO of Yahoo!, is 58 years-old. Skip Battle, CEO of AskJeeves, is 57. Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay, is a spry 45. If you’re looking for potentially successful dot-coms, you’re probably going to find some gray hair and experience in the corner office.

Established hands are taking the reins from the 20- and 30-somethings. At the CEO level, kids are out and experience is in.

But why would established executives with long, successful track records want to take on the challenge and responsibility of leading a flagging dot-com? That question was on my mind when I called Battle at Emeryville, Calif.-based AskJeeves.

AskJeeves, the 1996 start-up, was once an Internet darling, using natural language to fuel its search engine capability. A visitor to the AskJeeves site can, as Battle says, “ask a question just like you would ask a friend,” and AskJeeves gives you a few pretty good results. Other search engine competitors are more of a blind date. You have to type in key words, and you get a large number ofresponses, and then anything can happen.

AskJeeves has another advantage: With its funky English butler imagery, it’s been pretty well-marketed and has an established brand image. AskJeeves feels like a friendly, helpful and approachable site.

Battle reminded me that AskJeeves was created “to humanize the Internet,” putting the power of search engine technology in the hands of regular people who don’t want to fuss with “http://this,” or understand the intricacies of “Boolean search.”

That approach worked pretty well at the start. The company did an IPO in July 1999, and traded as high as $197 per share. But by late last autumn, things weren’t going so well for AskJeeves.

In early December, Battle, a board member and early investor, assumed the role of CEO. Battle, a former managing partner and executive committee member at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), retired in 1995 at age 50, after 27 years with the consultancy.

“When I left Andersen, I planned to spend about a third of my time on business stuff, a third on charitable stuff and a third on personal stuff,” he said.

It hasn’t quite worked out that way.

A New England native with an eclectic set of interests and a Stanford MBA, Battle never lacked for things to do. In addition to the AskJeeves board, he joined the boards of software developer Peoplesoft Inc.; risk management analytics firm Barra Inc.; Fair Isaac, a decision sciences company; two mutual fund boards; and a host of charitable organizations. He also became active with the prestigious Aspen Institute. By all accounts, his days were full and fulfilling.

But when the AskJeeves Board saw the storm clouds brewing at the end of last year, they turned to Battle.

“We didn’t think we had time to do a search. I was the only guy who was available and didn’t have a full-time day job,” he quipped in a recent interview.

Battle’s being modest.

The AskJeeves board knew what most start-up boards were realizing. The winds had changed, and they needed a mature and seasoned executive who could transform a well-marketed and -constructed technology-based start-up into an established company with a clear strategic plan, effective business processes and a regular and reliable stream of revenues and profits.

On Battle’s watch, AskJeeves has become a whole lot more than a pure consumer-based search engine site dependent upon dwindling online advertising revenues. He’s steering the company toward revenue streams from corporate clients such as Ford Motor Co., DaimlerChrysler, Nestle, Radio Shack and Nike, as a technology provider and customer intelligence deliverer.

Under the banner of Jeeves Business Solutions, Battle has taken his core natural language search technology and blended it with his many years of serving Global 2000 organizations. His company now provides itssoftware and technical skills to guide and direct the customers of such companies as Compaq and Dell as well as the United States Navy, and even the State of Washington and the National Cancer Institute. So when you go to the DaimlerChrysler Web site looking for that new convertible, for example, you can type in a question in natural language, thanks to AskJeeves’s technology. As an automobile customer, you get a more convenient tool to use. As a manufacturer, DaimlerChrysler gets to collect data at a lower cost than through call centers, and it gets to put its customers to work, because it can glean insights from tabulating and analyzing the kinds of questions customers ask. AskJeeves packages andprovides analytics for its clients, not unlike a marketing research firm or a consultancy. And customers do the data entry.

It’s a pretty smart product innovation and repositioning strategy. Battle says he’s up to 50 name clients, and he has a 90% renewal rate for the service. Not a bad start.

It’s hard to say whether AskJeeves will survive and prosper. But by refocusing AskJeeves on business solutions, which provided 53% of total revenues in its last fiscal quarter, Battle’s given the company a reasonable chance in my book.

The broader point is that the dot-coms and their investors are getting smart and putting executives in the corner offices like Skip Battle, who have the broad experience necessary for today’s marketplace. Leader-managers like Battle are just what the dot-coms need to replace the visionary iconoclasts who founded the dot-com revolution but had little or no “hands-on” experience.

Battle is equally comfortable defining business processes, cutting costs and right-sizing. Listening to him is a refreshing change of pace in the dot-com realm. There’s none of the arrogance and pseudo-intellectual hot air with Battle that existed among dot-com CEOs of the ’97, ’98 and ’99 vintage. After all, he’s got a business to run.

Funny, though, that after an hour-long inter-view with Battle, I’d learned a lot about AskJeeves, but I hadn’t learned why Battle did it.

“The best thing has clearly been the people, and I think we’re going to win,” Battle said. “Plus, being the CEO is fun, having the whole hunk to deal with, balancing all the ingredients.”

Having fun may be one trait that Battle shares with the Net’s early pioneers, but clearly, Battle’s a corporate CEO who’s had ample experience balancing the ingredients. That experience should be good for customers, employees, investors, and for the ultimate survival of the dot-coms.

I see now that my father was right about the difference between being old and being young.

Michael Krauss is a partner with Chicago-based DiamondCluster International. He can be reached at news@ama.org.