Michalski looks boyish and suburban, despite a generous nose and a diminishing hairline. But it's not his features that have supplicants bombarding him with phone calls and filling his office with an endless, free supply of the latest electronic gadgets and toys. Michalski is managing editor of Release 1.0, the pricey and influential newsletter published by EDventure Holdings. A mention by him in Release 1.0 can do for a software or hardware company what a line in Walter Winchell's gossip column did for a starlet's career in the 1940s.
Published since 1982, the newsletter has a cachet that owes much to Dyson, whose name tops the masthead. Although she is a frequent contributor, Michalski now does most of the writing. He sees hundreds of companies each year. "If there's something you have that's really great, I want to meet you," says Michalski. An audience with him is brief. "If they can't explain it in 5 to 10 minutes," he says, "then they haven't got anything that the user is going to understand, let alone buy."
Throughout the year, as he sits through hours of pitches and glitches, Michalski silently compiles a shortlist of lucky startups that will be invited to demo at PC Forum. A few are already shipping products, but Michalski reserves the best slots for the true "debutants" -- companies that have neither announced themselves to the world nor presented their products.
He demands that debutants be virgins. "We were scheduled to show our stuff at Internet World," says Keith Zentner of Netbot Inc., a deb that makes Internet shopping software. "But when we got the call from Jerry, we canceled."
There is palpable competition between PC Forum and the other two jewels in the Triple Crown of technology conferences: Demo and Agenda, both hosted by International Data Group. Agenda, founded by former Infoworld Editor in Chief Stewart Alsop, caps its attendance at 400 -- which makes PC Forum's ceiling of 600 and Demo's cap of 800 look plebian by comparison. These limits are meant to guarantee an intimate ambiance for learning and camaraderie. But the exclusivity also serves as a reminder that all revolutions -- even information revolutions -- ultimately create their own aristocracy.
Scott Moody has just returned from lunch, where he has been asking a friend, a successful entrepreneur, for advice. Moody needs to know how to survive what he shyly admits is a first-time experience for him: starting a company. Moody's lunch companion has been chillingly forthright. "He said I have to be willing to drown a puppy," says Moody, with a nervous laugh.
In fact, Moody bears a faint resemblance to a baby cocker spaniel. Eyes worthy of a painting on black velvet are framed by a shoulder-length mop of frizzy hair that he can barely constrain with an elastic band. He delivers all of his utterances, from phone greetings to business strategies, with wide-eyed enthusiasm.
Throw's product is a tool for creating what Moody describes as "purpose-centric communities." The low end of the Internet publishing spectrum concentrates on letting users build personal Web pages; the high end takes the form of giant online systems such as America Online. Moody's insight: there is an untapped opportunity in the middle of the market for helping groups of users with a common interest (a family, a Cub Scout pack, a fan club), and no programming skills, to create their own gated online system.
A parade of potential investors has previewed the software at Throw's loft. Each visitor applauds the product's uniqueness. There's just one difficulty: no one can describe in 25 words or less what it actually does.
This has been a matter of some discussion among the staff of eight, all of whom own equity in the company. Glenn Northrop is Throw's new president and its token grown-up. He worked at Young & Rubicam. He owns neckties. Today, at a meeting to discuss the upcoming PC Forum demo, he distributes a mission statement that he claims, only half-jokingly, is the 30th version that he's written in the last two weeks.
"The Throw Mission," the handout reads dryly, "is to set the standard for online community software that integrates communication and information, allowing groups to build thriving communities on the Web."
Moody fidgets in his chair, his eyes growing wide. "Maybe I should just do something like what that guy did in The Hudsucker Proxy," he suggests. The staff stares at him blankly. "Remember how Tim Robbins kept carrying his product idea around on a little piece of paper he kept in his shoe? And every once in a while, he'd pull it out and show it to people, and it was just this circle, and he'd say, 'You know, for kids.' I'll just stand up at PC Forum and pull this little piece of paper out of my shoe, and there'll be a circle on it, and I'll say, 'You know, for communities.'"
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