Paul Charlton

C2B Technologies Inc. 1997 to 1998

I heard nothing from Beyond News Inc, other than their name change immediately after July 1997, until July of the next year (1998.)

During the last week of July 1998 I received a communication from a man that I did not know, and when I called him back he offered me $800,000 for "all of your shares in Beyond News". Given the context of the call out of the blue, I felt like there were a lot of hidden details and that I had to learn more. I contacted my attorney and gave him the job of digging into what was going on, including exercise of my shareholder rights to obtain financial disclosures and copies of all corporate investment and governance documents. My attorney wrote up a sale of my shares, conditioned on COMPLETE disclosure of all corporate goings-on. They declined, they stalled, for several weeks. What finally occurred is that my attorney was contacted by another law firm, one that did not represent C2B, but represented Inktomi. Inktomi, they explained, had offered to buy the entire C2B for a stock swap valued at then $90 million, and that Inktomi had not been aware of my then 20% interest until the day prior to their call when they were doing diligence. C2B management had not discussed my ownership with Inktomi, and Inktomi lawyers dug it up out of the cap tables they were reviewing. Aha, that was the big reveal, and why the $800,000 offer (for 20% of $90million) seemed so sketchy. Shame on you NielW. Because my holdings were so large, Inktomi's attorneys were demanding my written consent to their offer.

Hardball #2

I pointed out to my attorney that my final invoice had never been paid, and my final share certificate had never been delivered. They wanted me to sign anyway, despite those failures, pointing out that I had over a $12 million upside in their proposed deal. Logic vs righteousness: their $12 million dollar logic was good, but my righteousness felt better ... I dug up the email where my co-founder had written that they were choosing termination for convenience, to which my attorney attached a cover letter citing my "excused performance", and that I was still legally entitled to those shares. When faced with the evidence of the email, the C2B management team caved and delivered my remaining share certificate the next day. Once my written approval was received by Inktomi, conditioned on the ratification of all of my shares, the acquisition was closed a few weeks later for $150 million in Inktomi shares -- I had insisted on receiving a physical certificate from Inktomi which was delivered to me during the last week of September.

A bit surreal -- I had a share certificate worth slightly over $30 million sitting on my bedstand.

If I had held those shares until the maximum valuation of Inktomi 18 months later, they would have been worth $300 million instead of $30 million. I cashed out earlier than that.
Inktomi was acquired by Yahoo in 2003 for 1% of its peak value.
even though I cashed out over $25 million in CY 1998, my name did not make the published list of top 50 earners in the SJ Mercury news, even though I was well into the top 50 that year -- I was happy for the privacy.
C2B had not implemented the coolest feature in the QE2 shopping experience. They only went as far as allowing the customer to compare prices from different vendors, across different websites, they had not created a real time auction where sellers could bid to obtain the customer's business. They had also added an advertising feature which could inject advertisements into the customer experience while the customer was still searching for the product they wanted.