PointCast, Inc.

Dorman immediately put his experience on display. Near the end of his get-acquainted speech, he conjured up an intriguing scenario. "Wouldn't it be fabulous," he asked, pausing for effect, "if we could create our own paranoia in the world? One huge company wants us. The other doesn't want that company to have us. This could really benefit us."

On Monday, October 27, 1997 - 72 hours after Dorman's arrival was announced - the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by 554 points. It was horrible news for most companies but great news for PointCast. The market drop underscored the unique value of this new medium: More than 500,000 people viewed PointCast each day that week.

"It was incredibly profound," says Lisa Gerould, 37, director of strategic marketing. "We were delivering time-sensitive information. The question was, 'How do we capitalize on it?"'

That question applies to more than just a one-day event on Wall Street. These days, big ideas and little companies are flying around Silicon Valley like loose atoms. Last year, an average of 15 companies in the Valley received new infusions of venture capital each month. Lots of those companies were built around the Internet - and more than a few of them were targeting PointCast's market. And the market itself keeps changing. A Webcasting service built around general-interest news - stock prices, movie reviews, weather reports - already feels passe. PointCast aspires to become a full-blown media company, with mission-critical information targeted to specific constituencies. Its products include the PointCast Business Network, the PointCast College Network, and the PointCast Intranet Broadcast Solution to "push" corporate data.

"It is an unfolding drama," says Gerould. "We need to be the protagonist, the lead player."

Which is what makes life at PointCast so exhilarating - and so nerve-wracking. Forget money. What really matters, Gerould insists, is being part of a successful enterprise that's contributing to the culture - that's reaching out to people respectfully, enabling them to use their time more productively. At least that's what she tells her parents and her husband, an engineer and lawyer who has been through a startup as well. It's also what she tells herself.

Gerould, a Smith College graduate who majored in English literature, with a concentration in feminist poetry, cares deeply about the social impact of her work. She is also a working mother - as are her boss, Jaleh Bisharat, and her colleague, Anna Zornosa, senior vice president for sales and affiliate development. Their children are young. Their time is precious. And they're passionate about PointCast because they think the company can help people like them.

"What you know defines how you succeed," says Bisharat. "That creates pressure on people. We offer tools to relieve that pressure. We help people cope."

The trouble with such a grand mission is that it's so difficult to realize - and so easy to violate. Bisharat worked with PointCast board member Kevin Harvey at Claris Corp., a promising software company that was spun out of Apple Computer. But just as Claris was taking flight, Apple brought it back into the corporate nest.

Then Bisharat became VP of marketing for Approach Software Corp., a startup that developed graphical-database systems. One day early in her tenure, two limos converged on Approach headquarters. Out of one stepped Jim Manzi, CEO of Lotus Development. Out of the other stepped John Landry, Lotus's chief technical officer. With mind-boggling speed, Approach became part of Lotus.

"The only way it was going to work was if we totally embraced the acquiring company," says Bisharat. "That's hard when you've built a company to be independent. We did a lot of staff counseling."

Even the freedom trail has some dangerous turns. Both Bisharat and Anna Zornosa, who helped run day-to-day operations during the search for a new CEO, acknowledge PointCast's mistakes. Its early Webcasts clogged too many corporate networks. Its content focused too much on consumer interests and too little on business needs. In a strange way, though, Bisharat and Zornosa savor those early mistakes - the enduring impact of their learn-as-you-go insights, the "aha moments" that come with life on your own.

Zornosa, 39, joined PointCast in November 1995, after a meteoric rise in the conventional publishing business. Her tenure with the company has been more intense than any other period in her life. In two years, she's experienced the challenges of corporate birth, corporate redefinition, and corporate survival. "If you get acquired now," she says, "you live with the knowledge that you couldn't achieve your own destiny. Someone else may be able to buy you and help you. But they'll never understand the value of pure grit."