Viant Inc. was a multinational Internet consulting firm, founded in

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 ...

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 Haba, Dwayne Nesmith, and Robbie Vann-Adibé as Silicon Valley Internet Partners (SVIP). It was one of the first consulting firms to attempt to integrate the disparate disciplines of strategy, 'creative' (design), and technology into a single value proposition and project approach. Such blended multi-disciplinary approaches have since become common. With investment from

Mohr Davidow Ventures Mohr may refer to: Places * Mohr, Fars, a city in Iran * Mohr County, an administrative subdivision of Iran * Mohr Rural District, an administrative subdivision of Iran Science and math * Mohr's circle, two-dimensional graphical representation ...

, Trident Capital, and

Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneurs ...

, SVIP grew rapidly. Robert Gett, from

Cambridge Technology Partners Cambridge Technology Partners (Japanese: ケンブリッジ・テクノロジー・パートナーズ株式会社, CTP) is a Japan-based multinational professional services company that specializes in business and IT consulting. The company is ...

, was recruited in mid-1996 in be the

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

. At this point, SVIP corporate functions moved to

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

. Greenberg left the company in early 1997, and subsequently founded

Scient Scient was a San Francisco-based Internet consulting company, founded in 1997, that was one of the large American consulting firms during the dot-com bubble. The company was founded by Eric Greenberg, who had previously founded its competitor, Vian ...

. SVIP changed its name to Viant in the spring of 1998 after a company-wide vote. Its

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a List of regions of California, region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, California, S ...

offices relocated in 1998 to the

South of Market area South of Market (SoMa) is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California, so named due to its location south of Market Street (San Francisco), Market Street. It contains several sub-neighborhoods including South Beach (San Francisco), South Beach ...

in San Francisco. The company went public in June 1999. By the end of that year Viant reached a stock price of

US$ The United States dollar (Currency symbol, symbol: Dollar sign, $; ISO 4217, currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and International use of the U.S. dollar, several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introdu ...

105 per share and a market capitalization of over $2 billion. Vann-Adibé left the firm in early 2000.

Business impacted by Dot com bust

The

Dot com bust 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 ...

hit the company hard, forcing

layoff A layoff or downsizing is the temporary suspension or permanent termination of employment of an employee or, more commonly, a group of employees (collective layoff) for business reasons, such as personnel management or downsizing an organization ...

s in 2000, 2001 and 2002. Employees later nicknamed each round based on their dates and impact, calling the Dec 7th round (10% cut) the "Pearl Harbor" round, while the March 2001 and 2002 rounds (40% cuts) were referred to as "Hiroshima" and "Nagasaki". The company was sold in September 2002 to

Divine Divinity (from Latin ) refers to the quality, presence, or nature of that which is divine—a term that, before the rise of monotheism, evoked a broad and dynamic field of sacred power. In the ancient world, divinity was not limited to a singl ...

, a company founded by

Andrew Filipowski Andrew J. "Flip" Filipowski is a Polish American technology entrepreneur born in 1950 in Chicago. He is currently the executive chairman and CEO of SilkRoad Equity, a private investment firm, and founded Platinum technology in 1987. He is also c ...

References

* * *
"Putting the e in Diversity"
Vault.com
"Viant Opens First International Office in London; Robbie Vann-Adibe and Michael Keany to Head Operations"
Looksmart * * {{refend Companies disestablished in 2002 Companies established in 1996 Online companies of the United States

History

Business impacted by Dot com bust

See also

References