Third Age - Do You Belong?

"We recruit plenty of Gen-Xers," says Furlong. "But we like to team them with people for whom, as a friend of mine from Montana says, 'this is not their first rodeo.' We took Harry Marks, who is in his sixties and who was our original creative consultant, and teamed him with a graphic designer in her twenties. We took [former U.S. Senator] Bill Bradley and teamed him with a 26-year-old associate editor."

Third Age's commitment to bottom-up community also applies to its extended business community - the directors, investors, and advisers who act as the company's brain trust. "Mort Meyerson once said to me, 'Make your board meetings fun, because if they're not, nobody's going to want to come,' " she says. So last October, when the company's second round of financing closed, Furlong joined the company's board of directors and its advisers for a sailing trip on Puget Sound. In December, a Third Ager in New York City took board members, investors, and potential partners on a private tour of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, followed by a private reception at a club. Sure, it was fun. But it was also serious business: "We probably did more business in two hours at that club than we would have done in five standard business trips."

The effortless mixing of business and pleasure is the essence of Mary Furlong's personality. Her business instincts come from an entrepreneurial father. Her social instincts come from her mother, a woman "who understands Southern hospitality at its best." But her maternal grandmother provided the real inspiration for Third Age.

"She lived near a park in Richmond, Virginia," says Furlong. "Her front porch was the favorite place in the neighborhood for people to stop by. She had this great 'gathering sense' about her. I saw how important it was for people to invest in each other - to follow the ups and downs of their lives, to celebrate, to cry, to laugh."

Furlong's initial attempt to re-create that community took shape when she was a professor at Catholic University in Washington, DC. A friend approached her about writing a book to be called Computers for Kids Over Sixty (Addison-Wesley, 1984). Furlong agreed to do it. To begin her research, she went to a Toys "R" Us and bought six Commodore computers. Then she rented TV sets to serve as monitors, made some cookies, and visited a local senior center.

"It was a life-transforming experience for me," she says. "They were the most impressive students I had ever seen."

So Furlong launched SeniorNet, a nonprofit computer-training organization for older adults. The organization grew to encompass 125 centers, and it became a much-celebrated force in the field of computer-driven social change. It also provided Furlong with her first serious exposure to the power of online communities. "We did lots of grief support," she says. "And we had 15 marriages."

The idea for Third Age began germinating in 1995, when Furlong attended Microsoft's launch of Windows 95. "I saw so much energy around this online thing," she says. Investment bankers saw something else: the founder of a successful nonprofit sharing the spotlight with Bill Gates, an exemplar of computer-age capitalism.

Furlong's phone started ringing. She formed Third Age in July 1996, launched the site in June 1997, and closed a second round of financing in October 1997. Today she continues to forge strategic partnerships and sponsorship deals with a remarkable collection of organizations and companies - from Toys "R" Us to E*Trade, from Renaissance Cruises to Yahoo!

But Furlong understands that Third Age is still in the homesteading phase. "Every seven seconds," she says, "someone in America turns 50. And every four seconds, someone posts a new Web site. If we can connect those trends, then Third Agers will have the same kind of community that my grandmother had in Virginia."

Eric Ransdell ransdell@well.com , a Fast Company contributing editor, is based in San Francisco.