Scient was a

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

-based

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

consulting A consultant (from "to deliberate") is a professional (also known as ''expert'', ''specialist'', see variations of meaning below) who provides advice or services in an area of specialization (generally to medium or large-size corporations). Cons ...

company, founded in 1997, that was one of the large American consulting firms during the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (or dot-com boom) was a stock market bubble that ballooned during the late-1990s and peaked on Friday, March 10, 2000. This period of market growth coincided with the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web and the Interne ...

. The company was founded by Eric Greenberg, who had previously founded its competitor,

Viant Viant Inc. was a multinational Internet consulting firm, founded in San Francisco in April 1996, that was one of the first web consulting firms during the early stages of the Internet era. History The company was founded by Eric Greenberg, Duc ...

. Its CEO was Robert Howe, the former head of IBM global consulting. At its height in the fall of 2000, it had quarterly revenues of US$100 million, 1,180 employees and a stock price of US$133. In August 2001, it bought rival company iXL; by then its quarterly revenues were down to US$11 million. In July 2002, the company filed for bankruptcy and was bought by SBI and Company, which became SBI Group. SBI Group later sold Scient with the other members of

Avenue A/Razorfish Razorfish is an interactive agency part of Publicis Groupe. Razorfish provides services, such as, web development, media planning and buying, technology and innovation, emerging media, analytics, mobile, advertising, creative, social influence ...

to a company called

aQuantive aQuantive, Inc. was the parent company of a group of three digital marketing service and technology companies: Avenue A/Razorfish, Atlas Solutions, and DRIVE Performance Solutions. Based in Seattle, Washington, the company was founded in 1997 ...

. aQuantive, in turn, was bought by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

in August 2007 and became Microsoft's newly created Advertiser and Publisher Solutions (APS) Group. On August 9, 2009, Microsoft sold the firm to

Publicis Groupe Publicis Groupe S.A. is a French multinational advertising and public relations company. As of 2024, the company is the largest advertising company in the world by revenue. Based in Paris, it is one of the 'Big Four' advertising commpanies, al ...

for $530M in cash and stock. At the time of the IPO in May 1999, the management team was headed by Eric Greenberg, Chairman and Founder, and Robert M. Howe, President & Chief Executive Officer.{{Cite web , title=Online IPOs for Joe Public - Oct. 2, 1999 , url=https://money.cnn.com/1999/10/02/investing/q_onlineipos/ , access-date=2022-07-20 , website=money.cnn.com

References

Online companies of the United States Technology companies established in 1997