Joining AltaVista

Schrock, 41, is by no means a typical entrepreneur - if indeed there is such a thing. There was no great idea, no opportunistic jump, and no futuristic zeal. He is in short, a company man. Yet he for one is not surprised to find himself running an internet business. Indeed, he would contend that the entrepreneurial spirit runs deep, and it was merely a question of time before he got to prove his credentials.

Schrock came from a moderately wealthy business family. In his youth, he worked part-time in his father's grocery store, where he says he learned the art of business, making money and the value of success. One lesson he remembers from his childhood has stuck with him:

'My dad had a great saying. One thing about him was he was very competitive, very determined to succeed. When I was about 11 or 12 years old, I used to play basketball and I was playing with my uncle, and my dad was playing with my brother.

'Up until that time I could never beat my dad at anything, but we started playing basketball and we got ahead by a couple of points and I got so excited I yelled out "We are winning" - and my dad immediately grabbed the ball, stopped the whole game and said "You're not winning, you're ahead, you haven't won until the game's over!" And that lasted with me forever.'

Schrock's business career began in classic style - a degree from Harvard, which followed brief spells working for IBM and Apple. He joined Compaq after graduating, a move he believes was a brave one:

'Compaq you have to understand was very entrepreneurial between 1982 and 1986 during its formative years. You have to realize their number one challenge was: how was IBM not going to put them out of business that quarter!

'IBM was a formidable competitor and at that point in time the PC industry didn't have the standards that it has today. So it was quite a risk to go and work for Compaq in those days. In fact when I left business school, friends said, boy, you're taking a big risk going there.'

The ambitious young graduate rose to manage various parts of the Compaq organization over the next 12 years. 'My time at Compaq was really about running new businesses, or being put in charge of those areas that weren't performing well and trying to sort them out,' Schrock says. Part of this experience involved managing Compaq's consumer division, to which AltaVista was attached when Compaq acquired Digital Equipment in 1998. It was to be a fortuitous move.

Schrock believes it was an advantage running businesses within a business, allowing him the financial freedom that perhaps would have constrained him in less benevolent situations:

'Yes, it did help. It is very similar frankly to the internet space today because the capital markets are supporting you and the venture capital is supporting you without you having to worry about making money immediately.

'But yes, there was an advantage (being within a large organization) because we started two major businesses - the whole network server business using PC technology and then going to the actual consumer market selling PCs to people in their homes. In both cases we lost significant amounts of money for two to three years before we turned them around to profitability.'

However, he denies that the pressure to succeed is any less in a corporate situation, such as Compaq, compared to a start-up:

'Yes, a big company gives you breathing space you may not have otherwise. But you have to realize that when you are in a large corporation where they are used to success - you know they make money every quarter - you are somewhat of a pariah if you are in a group that is not making much money. So you have to be very determined, you have to be willing to survive in that type of environment.'

Schrock says his reaction to being offered the AltaVista job, at the beginning of 1999, was one of excitement. He saw it as a chance to prove himself in the public as well as the corporate arena:

'My view was this was my third turn at writing a success story. I had done this twice before within Compaq, but this one was certainly more visible because when you are in a corporate environment you are well known within the company and with the people that you interface with. But this was a chance to become well known with the public at large and an opportunity to demonstrate a capability on the public stage rather than in a private way.'

Schrock was not angling for the AltaVista job. Although the internet intrigued him, and there was little doubting the enormous challenge the subsidiary posed, he was enjoying running the business he had built up:

'I was not lobbying for the job. I was running a $5 billion successful consumer PC business. We were number one in markets here and abroad, and, almost by accident, AltaVista is put inside my group.

'Imagine you are running a 5 billion dollar business and they put a little 10 million dollar internet company inside? You know you have to have a lot of strength and character and know what the future is all about to justify spending a lot of time on the 10 million dollar piece rather than the 4.99 billion dollar piece!'

But spend time on it he did:

'I was asked to figure out what to do with AltaVista. I actually went to a board meeting and recommended that we form a strategic partnership with Yahoo in which case we would put money in AltaVista. I was rejected at that board meeting and right after that meeting the chairman of the board, Ben Rosen, and CEO, Eckhard Pfeifer, basically got me in a room and said we want to unlock the value of AltaVista. We are not going to sell it and therefore we want you to run the company - that was how it got started.'

But what qualifications did Schrock think he had to run an internet business? After all, Compaq was not renowned for its web strategy or presence.

'Well, we had championed internet PCs, and we had championed internet connectivity - that's the reason why people buy home PCs and get onto the internet. They use Compaq PCs - that's how I was qualified to run an internet company.'