THE INCUBATOR COMPANY CMGI, Chairman and CEO NET WORTH $3 billion AGE 44 ADDRESSwww.cmgi.com BIO This cherry picker knows where to pluck even before there is any fruit on the
tree. Wetherell started College Marketing Group Inc. in 1994 to sell textbooks to
college professors. After taking the company public, he used the proceeds to
invest in Booklink, which he later sold to AOL for a cool $70 million, and Lycos.
It was just the beginning: since then, he has made a career of buying stakes in
promising Internet upstarts, nurturing their growth with money and good advice
and then selling them or taking them public--and reaping monster returns for
himself and his shareholders. CMGI has invested in more than 30 companies in the
past four years. Last spring he really flexed his muscles to quash Barry Diller's
lowball bid for Lycos, the search engine in which CMGI owns an 18.5% stake; the
$2 million Wetherell invested back in 1995 is worth $750 million today. His one
regret: passing on eBay, a mistake he calculates cost him $4 billion.
BEST LINE"We have companies growing at a rate of 1% a day. The Internet is
growing at a rate of 3% a day. If you can't make money in this business, then you
might as well go pick oranges."
FORWARD TILT Watch for the next CMGI-sponsored Net initial public offering. CMGI
shareholders will get in at the ground floor.
