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Or at least two guys from Stanford's Graduate School of Business, which has become a hothouse for aspiring Internet entrepreneurs. Forty-five students out of this June's graduating class of 360 have already started their own Internet business, more than double the number in 1998. The reason is simple. Stanford M.B.A.s spend two years schmoozing A-list Valley executives and VCs--and other people don't. Garth Saloner, a professor at Stanford, says it works like this: "You're 27 years old, you are sitting in an auditorium, there's a billionaire in front of you, and you are thinking 'Gee, why not me?'"
And why not Lui and Lombardi, who hatched their business as a class project with two other Stanford students? Last January, while waiting for take-out rotisserie chicken, Lui, who worked as an investment banker after college, had this epiphany: "It would be good if there were just one Man Store," he told Lombardi. "One aisle with stuff for the first date, and a flower aisle for when you screw up with the girl." Lombardi, a former consultant who played football at Cal Poly, instantly saw Lui's vision and volunteered his own embarrassment. On his first anniversary, he bought stacks of fancy stationery for his wife, who doesn't write letters. Only later did he find out that for their paper anniversary, theater tickets would have been appropriate, not to mention more fun. Why wasn't there a website to tell him that? Lui and Lombardi formed Maverick Online a week later.
They considered keeping the Man Store idea to themselves and submitting an inferior project for the class, but decided to trust their classmates with its broad outlines. Over the next six months, Lui and Lombardi worked out of Lombardi's Palo Alto apartment, fitting classes in between meetings with VCs, designers and prospective employees. Commuting the 35 miles between Stanford and San Francisco, they logged more than 2,800 miles and countless uses of the word passion (typical usage: "At the end of the day, this isn't about money. It comes down to passion"). In May they took their business plan to Information Technology Ventures, a small venture-capital firm, and secured $2 million in seed money, some of which they used to pay off the $40,000 tab Lui had amassed on six credit cards.
Two weeks before graduation, they opened an office in San Francisco, rented from Lui's former employer, Lycos. By August, they had 15 employees and a home page. Even by the Valley's standards of secrecy, which make Langley seem gossipy, the founders were notably paranoid, concealing the company behind the stealth name Maverick and insisting that everyone but their parents (probably) sign a three-page nondisclosure agreement before hearing what the company was all about. Last Friday, as its website went live, the company revealed its URL and new name: