Voyage to the New Economy

Big-company executives are heading to the online economy with a wide range of motivations and expectations. They see a big, open, uncharted land of opportunity -- and wonder what it might be like to live there. They like the idea, intrinsic to the Internet economy, of being able to have an impact on the world around them -- of launching products and services used by millions of customers -- without having to be part of the vast, impersonal, insular bureaucracies. They hunger for less routine, fewer meetings, and more energy and excitement in their day-to-day work lives. And to be sure, they read tales of quick riches and overnight fame.

For all of the excitement, though, the modern-day Great Migration can be a harrowing experience -- even if it doesn't involve stormy, monthlong journeys on packet ships. Thanks to this spring's NASDAQ meltdown, the finances of many Internet companies -- even big-name companies -- seem decidedly less secure than they did just a few months ago. And the reality of life in the dotcom world has lost some of its early romance: Is it all that desirable to give up your car service, your personal assistant, and first-class air travel -- not to mention a collection of seasoned colleagues who know their way around an industry -- to work at a desk fashioned from a door and to call staff meetings in which the average age of attendees is 28? It's no wonder that more than a few big-company executives have looked across the gulf that separates their current world from the Internet economy, considered several offers from well-funded startups -- and decided to stay put.

Yet it's impossible to obscure the Internet economy's continuous pull. In the new economy, "there's a talent shortage at almost every level," says David Beirne, a venture capitalist at Benchmark Capital, in Menlo Park, California. Beirne spends much of every week helping Benchmark recruit top-management talent into its portfolio companies. (In fact, he was the one who helped introduce Shaun Holliday to Andrew Busey.) A few years ago, prying candidates out of big companies was a dauntingly difficult challenge, he says. Now the chance to be part of "the next Amazon" or "the next eBay" is enticing enough that practically every established company has been poached at least once.

Such massive shifts don't just create a sense of excitement among the people making the journey; they also generate profound unease among kinfolk who are left behind. Consider the mood in what is now Germany -- a country that saw nearly a million of its people emigrate in the 1860s, even as the United States was in the midst of Civil War upheaval. During this time, German painters stopped immortalizing court scenes. Instead, they turned their attention to the most poignant drama of the time, painting families at piers, bidding farewell to emigrants. "No one can tear himself away without pain," the "Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung" declared in 1865, even as it marveled that "it is often just the best, the most respectable and efficient people who leave us."

For those who are considering whether to set sail for the Internet economy, the Great Migration raises a collection of rich, important questions: Should you make the voyage? What do you want to achieve once you arrive at your destination? Do you know what life will be like there? Are you prepared for stormy weather? The profiles that follow provide some answers.

Should You Make the Voyage?

For the past five years, working from midtown Manhattan, Michele James, 38, has been encouraging people to join the Great Migration. She is a onetime television executive who helped build an online media practice for Korn/Ferry International, one of the world's largest head-hunting firms. She coaxed Robert Bowman, former president and COO of ITT Corp., to become CEO of Cyberian Outpost, an online merchant. She wooed John Caplan from a career in advertising to join About.com, an online guidebook, where he is now general manager and chief marketing officer.

"I ask people, 'Do you want to be at a cliff-hanger?' " James says. "The Web is all about cliff-hanging. There are no rules -- or else you're making up the rules as you go along. If you have a high need for respect, then you shouldn't be working at a Web company. Employees are going to think of themselves as part owners, and they aren't going to be very deferential. Wall Street is going to be taking potshots at the company. Any senior manager coming into a Web company has to be able to live with that."

To make the switch, she tells people, you need to be very comfortable making rapid decisions with limited information. You must be willing to improvise every month and sometimes every hour. You need to set priorities relentlessly: There will always be too much to do, and it's up to you to figure out what offers the best payoff and what is ultimately only a distraction. You need to be a magnet for talent, building up a small company's workforce in a hurry. And it helps to swallow one's pride from time to time and to do some of the grunt work -- work that is usually delegated at a big company but that won't get done at a startup unless everyone pitches in.