Age: 39
Nationality: Belgian
www.reef.com

Despite jet lag and a fever, Philippe Brawerman was firing on all cylinders one recent afternoon at a restaurant near Paris' Gare du Nord, deftly handling a cell phone call, a chat with his two lunch companions and communications over his Palm Pilot while tucking into a plate of pork and sauerkraut.

It's fitting that Brawerman is so adept at communicating on so many levels at once, since multichannel commerce (mc-commerce) is tipped as the Next Big Thing — and his company, Reef, is at the heart of it.

The idea behind mc-commerce is to enable firms to transmit content to consumers regardless of the device they happen to be using at the time. Reef has just acquired technology to translate data on the fly, adapting it to fit mobile phones, personal digital assistants, desktop computers or digital television sets. Less than two years old and reporting revenues of only $8 million during its first year of operation, Brawerman's venture is dwarfed by other players.

But Reef is an example of a European firm that is setting the pace not only in the wireless space but in all areas of commerce conducted over the Internet. And Brawerman is one example of a European ceo who has put his U.S. management experience to work back home.

He headed Cisco's Europe, Middle East and Africa division for five years, taking revenues from an insignificant sum to more than $1 billion. Brawerman left Cisco in 1996 to become a business angel, investing in about 25 start-ups in Europe and the U.S. Reef grew out of a chance encounter at a Brussels nightclub with Cecile Feront, then a business student in France. She went on to become Reef's co-founder and Brawerman's romantic partner.

The two launched Reef and acquired an impressive list of customers and partners, including Virgin Music, Sun Microsystems and Credit Suisse. In October 2000, Reef received $34 million in second-round financing, money it will spend on developing its multichannel strategy. As mc-commerce kicks in, companies will find themselves spending more time and money to maintain and adapt their websites for different formats. And Reef intends to be there to make that job a lot easier and cheaper.

The vision thing: "Users will want the ability to receive the right information at the right time and on the right device."

Forward spin: Though Reef faces competition from U.S. software companies like Vignette, no other firm has gone as far in cutting companies' website costs and putting data management back in the hands of users.

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