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DEVELOPING NEW BUSINESS IDEAS200

Mueller and Gelobter struck up an immediate rapport. As a result of
further productive meetings, Mueller spent time in Warsaw researching
how he could contribute to the further development of Gelobter’s
publishing ventures. One of the options Mueller proposed was that he
should split his time between working for Gelobter and pursuing his own
business development interests.

Mueller made a number of useful contacts in Poland, including the
cousin of a former Polish colleague who had worked at the Warsaw
Stock Exchange and now wrote a daily column about the stock market
for the leading financial daily. In parallel with his consideration of the
publishing venture, Mueller’s interest in the financial information
business was reawakened by the financial strategy course at Harvard
Business School which focused on two online companies – Technical
Data Corporation and BRC. Mueller decided to re-evaluate the idea of
some type of online service for Eastern Europe which he had previously
shelved. The outcome of this re-evaluation took the form of a business
school project.

In the early 1990s, the internet was still in its infancy. Regarding the
internet as a ‘toy for techies’, many established organisations adopted a
‘wait-and-see’ attitude to the internet, rather than risk cannibalising
their existing business generated through conventional channels.

In order to obtain a broad-brush assessment of the technological
feasibility of the idea, Mueller contacted his brother George, a research
engineer at Carnegie Mellon University with extensive experience of
advanced systems integration and programming. George Mueller,
together with his colleague Jae Chang, reassured Gary of the project’s
technical feasibility: internet technology and access were becoming
cheaper and simpler, hardware costs were falling some 40 per cent per
annum and the required database program could be adapted from off-
the-shelf programs, rather than commissioned as bespoke (and
expensive) software. The opportunity to assume first-mover advantage
undoubtedly existed.

Gary Mueller again brought his wider network into play, gaining
invaluable access to experts in the online financial information industry,
among others, to help refine his business idea. Turning his back on the
six-figure salaries, generous starting bonuses and apparently risk-free
futures accepted by his business school peers from the leading
consultancy and investment companies, Gary Mueller set to work in