Stanford GSB: Stanford Business November 2000

In August 1999, Siebel Systems was enjoying its spot at the top of Fortune's list of the nation's 100 fastest-growing companies after capturing the lead in the $2.3 billion market for customer relationship management software. There was a heady feeling in the corporate offices, but no time for the firm's founder, Tom Siebel, to rest on his laurels. The world was changing, new companies were developing Internet-based tools, and a few major firms were challenging Siebel's position.

Siebel's strategic challenges were sketched out in a 25-page case, one of some 61 new cases researched and written last year for Business School classes. Fourteen of the new cases are available online via the Web site of the Center for Electronic Business and Commerce. While the bulk of the School's cases are distributed through Harvard Business School Publishing under a joint agreement, many of the cases in the rapidly changing area of electronic commerce are being made available under an honor system that asks users to register electronically and then permits them to download the cases on the spot.

The Electronic Commerce elective alone generated more than a dozen new cases on topics like online auctions and e-commerce building blocks or on firms like BabyCenter, Cisco Systems, and the Latin American portal site MercadoLibre. One class discussed a case dealing with America Online the very day that the AOL-Time Warner merger made headlines.

Other new cases dealt with organizations seldom or never mentioned in the same breath as dot-coms, such as the New Zealand Abalone Growers, Continental Airlines, or the Biehl Foundation, created by the family of Amy Biehl, the former Stanford student murdered in South Africa.

Cases were produced by research associates in the School's case-writing office. Others were written by students or by outside writers, in most instances working for the case-writing office or for the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.

The case office, managed by Margot Sutherland, doesn't have time to rest on its laurels, however. By August the team was already at work on a list of 49 cases requested by faculty for the 2000-2001 academic year.

When classmates honored the coeditors of the student newspaper, the Reporter, with the Arbuckle Award at commencement in 1975, each received a modest check from Stanford Business School. "It seemed disrespectful to simply cash the check and spend it on groceries," says Scott Anderson Jr., who shared the honor with classmate Colin Monk.

Anderson framed his $100 check with his award letter and hung it on a wall in his home, where last year his teenage daughter Julie discovered it. "She asked me one of those perplexing questions teenagers often ask that go right to the heart of the matter: Why did I not give the check back to the school," recalls Anderson, now chief financial officer for Pick Systems, a database management software company in Irvine, Calif. He took Julie's advice, endorsing check 402823 to the Class of 1975 fellowship fund as part of this year's class reunion gift. Imagine "a finance jock from Stanford," he says, "sitting on a check for 25 years. Think of the float!"

"Before Meg Whitman was president and CEO of eBay, her job was not all work. Was she with Playmobil, Playskool, Playboy, or Playtex?

"If you don't know the answer, you, too, can be a benefactor," master of ceremonies Bob Kagle, MBA '80, teased Geoffrey Yang, MBA '85, during a contest of venture capitalists that Kagle organized for the 24th annual Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award dinner of the Peninsula Chapter of the Stanford Business School Alumni Association.

This year's Encore Award went to the popular person-to-person online trading company, eBay, which also provided the software for the party so that Kagle could stage the Who-Wants-to-Be-a-Benefactor? contest, modeled after the TV show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

"It was a lot of fun and we raised $435,000 in total, including $150,000 for the Business School," said Kagle, a partner in Benchmark Capital and a member of the committee that selected eBay for the award.

The game contestants, whose companies contributed the initial prize money, were some of Silicon Valley's most prominent venture capitalists-Yang of Redpoint Ventures; Andrew Rachleff, MBA '84, of Benchmark Capital; Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson; and Jim Breyer of Accel Partners.

Each contestant forked over an additional $5,000 each time he asked for a "lifeline." (For those who don't watch the hit TV show, a lifeline is help from a friend.) Kagle based his questions on eBay lore, so when Yang asked for a lifeline from Jeff Skoll, MBA '95 and vice president and cofounder of eBay, Kagle charged Yang double. Yang and the other contestants were allowed to name a nonprofit to share with the Business School in their cash gifts.

By the way, if you didn't know the answer to Kagle's question, Meg Whitman was responsible for global management and marketing of the children's brand Playskool.

Associate Dean Karen Nierenberg, who inaugurated the very popular MBA Admit Day programs and played a key role in creating the School's annual Women's Conference and the Partnership for Diversity Program to attract and support minority MBA students, has left the Business School after 14 years of service.

In 1997, she convinced the School's leadership to undertake a three-year fundraising effort that would attempt to raise $75 million and would provide the context for a celebration of the School's 75th anniversary in May 2000. The drive eventually raised more than $140 million, and the three-day anniversary celebration brought nearly 3,000 people to campus.

Nierenberg began her career at the Business School as assistant director of admissions before becoming admissions director; she was responsible for the classes of 1991 through 1993. In 1991, Nierenberg was named director of development and two years later became associate dean for external relations.

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