Viant Inc. was a multi-national
Internet consulting firm, founded in
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 ...
in April 1996, that was one of the first web consulting firms during the early stages of the
Internet era
The Information Age (also known as the Computer Age, Digital Age, Silicon Age, or New Media Age) is a historical period that began in the mid-20th century. It is characterized by a rapid shift from traditional industries, as established during ...
.
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 o ...
,
Trident Capital, and
Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, SVIP grew rapidly.
Robert Gett, from
Cambridge Technology Partners
Cambridge Technology Partners (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 known for f ...
, was recruited in mid-1996 in be the
CEO
A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...
. At this point, SVIP corporate functions moved to
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 ...
,
. 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, Via ...
.
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, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...
offices relocated in 1998 to the
South of Market area 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 (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
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 (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 Compos ...
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 (reducing the ...
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 or the divine are things that are either related to, devoted to, or proceeding from a deity.[divine](_blank) , 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 cu ...
.
See also
Fast Five (consulting)
The "Fast Five" were a group of publicly traded Consultant, consulting firms that developed in the mid 1990s to capitalize on the rapid commercial development of the Internet.
The term "Fast Five" was coined to draw a contrast with the establishe ...
References
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*
*
"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