Tradex Technologies Inc. was a developer of

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

-based

B2B e-commerce B2B e-commerce, short for business-to-business electronic commerce, is the sale of goods or services between businesses via an online sales portal. In general, it is used to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of a company's sales efforts. In ...

software. It primarily operated in the industries of

financial services Financial services are the Service (economics), economic services provided by the finance industry, which encompasses a broad range of businesses that manage money, including credit unions, banks, credit-card companies, insurance companies, acco ...

telecommunication Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...

plastic Plastics are a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic materials that use polymers as a main ingredient. Their plasticity makes it possible for plastics to be moulded, extruded or pressed into solid objects of various shapes. This adaptab ...

s, and

foodservice The foodservice (US English) or catering (British English) industry includes the businesses, institutions, and companies which prepare meals outside the home. It includes restaurants, school and hospital cafeterias, catering operations, and many ...

. It offered a platform for vertical trading hubs, another for large enterprises, and a third for the distributor channel segment. The software used

JavaBeans In computing based on the Java Platform, JavaBeans is a technology developed by Sun Microsystems and released in 1996, as part of JDK 1.1. The 'beans' of JavaBeans are classes that encapsulate one or more objects into a single standardized objec ...

technology. At the peak of the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compo ...

in March 2000,

SAP Ariba SAP Ariba is an American software and information technology services company located in Palo Alto, California. It was acquired by German software maker SAP SE for $4.3 billion in 2012. Company beginnings Ariba (now SAP Ariba) was founded in ...

acquired Tradex for 19 million shares of Ariba stock, then worth $5.6 billion. The company received 60% of revenue from licensing its software, 30% from support services, and 10% from transaction fees.

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone , commonly known as NTT, is a Japanese telecommunications company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. Ranked 55th in Fortune Global 500, ''Fortune'' Global 500, NTT is the fourth largest telecommunications company in the world in terms of revenue, as w ...

was the largest customer of the company and

VerticalNet Verticalnet, Inc. was a host of 43 business-to-business (B2B) procurement portals headquartered in Horsham, Pennsylvania. It was famous for its market capitalization of $10.89 billion on March 10, 2000, during the dot-com bubble, despite sales of ...

was also a customer.

History

The company was founded by

Daniel Aegerter Daniel Simon Aegerter (born July 20, 1969) is a Swiss businessman and venture capitalist. Formerly founder and CEO of Tradex Technologies, he later founded Armada Investment AG to manage his wealth. He was an early investor in Nutmeg (company), N ...

as an Internet-based system for automating the purchase of computer

peripheral A peripheral or peripheral device is an auxiliary device used to put information into and get information out of a computer. The term ''peripheral device'' refers to all hardware components that are attached to a computer and are controlled by the ...

s for

electronic publishing Electronic publishing (also referred to as publishing, digital publishing, or online publishing) includes the digital publication of e-books, Online magazine, digital magazines, and the development of digital library, digital libraries and catalo ...

, which were distributed by his company, Dynabit. At first, in 1996, Tradex offered a wholesale marketplace for computer equipment, with 40 vendors offering 15,000 products. In 1999, the company had 180 employees and 480 customers. In 1996, it received an award from the

Gartner Group Gartner, Inc is a technological research and consulting firm based in Stamford, Connecticut that conducts research on technology and shares this research both through private consulting as well as executive programs and conferences. Its clients ...

and

InformationWeek ''InformationWeek'' is a digital magazine which conducts corresponding face-to-face events, virtual events, and research. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California and was first published in 1985 by CMP Media, later called Informa. The ...

as the best

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

solution. Revenues in 1998 were estimated to be less than $5 million. By September 1999, the company had raised $28 million from investors including

Internet Capital Group Actua Corporation was a venture capital firm. During the dot com bubble, the company had a market capitalization of over $50 billion. The company was originally known as Internet Capital Group, Inc. and changed its name to Actua Corporation in Se ...

, Sigma Partners, Apex Investment Partners,

Draper Fisher Jurvetson Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) is an American venture capital firm focused on investments in enterprise, consumer and disruptive technologies. In January 2019, DFJ Venture, the early-stage team, spun out and formed Threshold Ventures. DFJ Growth ...

, First Analysis Corporation, Imlay Investments, and

United Parcel Service United Parcel Service (UPS, stylized as ups) is an American multinational corporation, multinational package delivery, shipping & receiving and supply chain management company founded in 1907. Originally known as the American Messenger Company ...

. In 1999, it was negotiation a headquarters move to

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. It also had offices in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

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, Tampa,

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

Washington D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, Na ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

and

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

. In December 1999, Ariba announced the acquisition of Tradex for stock then valued at $1.86 billion. In January 2000, the company reached a reselling agreement with

JD Edwards J.D. Edwards World Solution Company or JD Edwards, abbreviated JDE, was an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software company, whose namesake ERP system is still sold under ownership by Oracle Corporation. JDE's products included World for IB ...

. On March 8, 2000, at the height of the

dot com bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compo ...

, Ariba completed the acquisition. Ariba shares had tripled since the announcement of the acquisition 4 months earlier and Tradex was therefore valued at $5.6 billion, making Daniel Aegerter a

billionaire A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least one billion (1,000,000,000, i.e., a thousand million) units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. The American busin ...

on paper.

References

{{Dot-com Bubble 2000 mergers and acquisitions Defunct online companies of the United States Dot-com bubble Java enterprise platform