October 17, 2000 |
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Web Firm Provides Opportunity
For Growth for Different People
By CAROL HYMOWITZ
DONNA LACHANCE, Bonnie Bertram and
David Osterweil all landed unexpectedly at eTour.com, an Atlanta-based
Internet company that connects individuals with Web sites that match their
interests. All have distinct aspirations and experiences that show how
career goals change as we move through our 20s, 30s and 40s -- yet all
have found opportunity in the same workplace.
Mr. Osterweil, 23 years old and a recent college graduate who had just
moved to Atlanta, was sitting at the pool in his apartment complex when
he overheard a young woman talking about her work at eTour. He asked her
for the name of a contact for a job. A year ago, he was hired to help promote
the site.
Ms. Bertram, 36 and a producer at cable network CNN, was on a flight
from San Francisco to Atlanta, seated next to a very opinionated man. The
minute she sat down "he told me the book I was reading was junk," she recalls.
They spent the rest of the flight talking about other books, favorite authors,
movies, current events, "and we disagreed about everything," Ms. Bertram
says.
But when the plane landed, Jim Lanzone, 28, one of the four founders
of eTour, asked her if she would consider a move to an Internet company.
Fourteen months ago, after first saying no, she accepted a job as editor
in chief of eTour.
Ms. Lachance, 45, had just moved
her husband and two children from Atlanta to Sydney, Australia, to become
president of the multimedia division of Cable & Wireless Optus, when
a former colleague told her that eTour was looking for a chief operating
officer. She had spent her 23-year career in large U.S. corporations and
wanted to work abroad for a few years. Still, she decided to phone eTour's
CEO on a visit to the U.S. Six months ago, she moved her family back to
Atlanta and became eTour's No. 2, overseeing day-to-day operations and
the company's 165 employees.
FOR MR. OSTERWEIL, just working at an Internet company that offered
stock options was cause to celebrate. "I saw all of these guys getting
rich at the age of 24 and I wanted that," says Mr. Osterweil, whose previous
job experience was limited to a few internships. "Plus, I thought it would
be a better learning experience than going to business school."
Within a few months, he was promoted to a job in retention marketing,
with the task of trying to bring back lapsed users. His boss challenged
him to invent new tactics, telling him to "ask for forgiveness, not permission,"
Mr. Osterweil says. His idea was to send e-mails to inactive users and
offer a sweepstakes prize.
The company is still private, and with many Internet stocks currently
in the tank Mr. Osterweil doesn't expect to become a millionaire soon.
But eTour gives him the chance to "come up with my own ideas and then get
advice from more seasoned people on how to fine tune them," he says. College
friends at big companies earn more but aren't at the center of things at
work, he says. In addition, the young staff at eTour provides an instant
circle of close friends.
By contrast, Ms. Bertram already had a large network of professional
friends from the years she worked at CNN, and at several newspapers and
magazines. Initially, she found her career in cable television innovative
and exciting, but it began to feel "like a velvet coffin," she says. She
believes many people in their mid-30s who find themselves in that position
think they "can let their career coast for a while and make home decorating
or another hobby a priority. But I think if you're heading on that track,
you need to set a new track."
SHE RELISHED THE chance to be in a pioneering environment where
she could "build rather than just manage" a business. In the 14 months
she has been at eTour, she has created an editorial department of 12 professionals
and helped expand the site to four million members from one million.
She has had to adjust to being one of the eldest employees at eTour.
When everyone brought in baby pictures of themselves to try to identify
each other, one colleague assumed her black-and-white photo was of her,
she says. Yet she feels refreshed by her staff's energy and enterprise.
At 45, Ms. Lachance also wanted
to "be surrounded by all of the youth and energy this environment supplies."
She was eager to "steer the next big Internet brand to success."
Ms. Lachance is a veteran of several
Old Economy giants, including Procter
& Gamble, where with eBay's Meg Whitman she was a brand manager
for Ivory shampoo. She also was vice president, marketing, of BellSouth.net,
leading the company into the Web. But being an "intrapreneur" was ultimately
limiting, she found. She preferred "a place where instead of me being the
radical who was trying to move the old model in new ways, I was the one
who was being pulled," she says.
The pay cut she took to join eTour is worth it, she believes, for the
chance to strike it big. The company boasts healthy ad and visitor volumes,
with about 500,000 hits a month. As chief operating officer, she also can
offer her wisdom to ease worries about fallout in the industry. "I spend
a good part of my time talking to my team members about why our business
model makes sense," she says. "Some of the perspective I have from years
in business allows me to help them through this period."
The three say regardless of what the future holds for eTour, their own
careers have grown.
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