Determination wins through for Net pioneer

Being rejected by 27 venture capitalists might have been enough to make many entrepreneurs retire in disgust, but it made Alan Meckler even more determined. Mr Meckler, chairman and chief executive of Internet media company Mecklermedia, is a 53-year-old former historian who spent nearly 20 years running a speciality publishing house. His formula was always the same. He would choose an esoteric topic of personal interest (baseball cards, antique boats, white-collar crime) and calculate what kind of information would lure professionals in that field (card dealers, boat sellers, lawyers) to pay thousands of dollars. Mr Meckler would hire researchers, create a high-priced newsletter aimed at this narrow audience - 300 to 3,000 subscribers was considered successful - and complete the circle by publishing books and running seminars and shows related to the same topic. 'I started a newsletter in 1990 about the Internet, thinking I would sell it only to libraries,' he said. That newsletter became Internet World magazine, and Mr Meckler soon realised he had entered a field with much broader business potential. Selling off his other newsletters to fund Internet World, Mr Meckler did the rounds with venture capitalists to raise capital. Yet, between 1991 and 1993, Mr Meckler was rejected routinely because no one saw Internet commerce as an emerging field. Five years later, countless consultancies predict billions of dollars of business will be conducted through the Net in a couple of years. GartnerGroup predicts that by 2001 Internet commerce could be worth more than US$22 billion in Asia alone, excluding Japan. Mecklermedia is poised to take advantage of this huge market. Apart from publishing Internet World magazine, the company has organised 35 trade shows of the same name in 29 countries, including one set for November in Beijing and for November next year in Hong Kong. His firm's Web site, Internet.com, gets about 20 million page views per month. Mecklermedia made $49.8 million in the first three quarters of this financial year and, unlike many Internet firms, had a net income of $6.4 million. It is enough to make a self-made businessman feel vindicated, and possibly a touch overconfident. Mr Meckler claimed he had 'probably been right 80 per cent of the time about anything I've predicted about the Internet since 1990'. He reportedly told a rival Internet business magazine that while Bill Gates might be the most powerful public figure on the Internet today, he was the Internet's most powerful behind-the-scenes person. Mr Meckler even said he beat Yahoo to the idea of a directory of Web sites, publishing a book listing Web sites back in 1992. Mr Meckler's advice to Internet start-up firms wanting to make it big like Yahoo was to set their sights low. Rather than sell all types of books via the Web like Amazon.com, he recommended companies concentrate on something narrow, such as oversized art history books, and then use that expertise to make money in related services, such as subscription newsletters or seminars. That was the key to Mecklermedia's present and future success, he said. For example, about a third of Mecklermedia's revenues came from staging trade shows. The magazine did not even need to make a profit as long as it continued to draw users to the trade shows, he said. A small Internet World show was held in Hong Kong in the summer of last year, but this summer's exhibition was cancelled by its SAR partner, computer products distributor SiS International, due to anticipated weak demand. Mecklermedia has joined trade show giant Reed Exhibitions to hold Internet World in Hong Kong in November next year. Consequently, while Mr Meckler remained keen on companies with a special technology, he was unexcited by brand-name Web publishers or content firms trying to sell ads. He was sceptical particularly about the notion of 'portals' - Web sites like Yahoo and Excite that try to attract a broad range of Internet users by buying up and offering diverse, free services, such as e-mail, chat, breaking news, and more. He said that field was too competitive and noted that rates for banner ads were dropping. After last week's chaos on the Nasdaq stock market, where key Internet stocks, including Amazon.com and Yahoo, lost 20 per cent of their value in one day, Mr Meckler was playing the bear. 'No question that there is a coming deflation [in the United States stock markets],' he said. Net stocks that had been 'flying high without earnings' were vulnerable. Despite Mr Meckler's misgivings, Mecklermedia has bought 18 Web sites. The company's latest buy was a Web site about Javascript for which he paid a 17-year-old high-school student $500,000. The difference, he said, was that his portal was aimed at a specialised audience, which meant less competition and rising advertising rates. 'Our goal is to become the CNN of Internet business news,' he said.