
DATE: Monday, March 3, 1997                 TAG: 9703010397

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  102 lines

SLACKER HACKERS THEY MAY LOOK LAID BACK, BUT WHEN IT COMES TO DEVELOPING WEB SITES, THE FOUNDERS OF NORFOLK'S STRATUM NEW MEDIA ARE ALL BUSINESS.

The founders of Stratum New Media started the company on a shoestring budget, fermented their business plan over beer and cigars, and decided to forego job titles.

Yes, they're pretty young and laid back, sometimes wearing shorts and T-shirts as they develop business sites on the beyond-trendy World Wide Web.

They can see the stereotypical storyline now: ``Web Company Founded in Garage.'' And it makes them wince.

You see, these guys are serious.

Theirs is not a story of a company taking a wild leap onto the wagon train heading for the Silicon Valley gold rush. It's a tale of how some folks got an entrepreneurial itch, but took deliberate steps to minimize their risk.

Stratum New Media was founded about three months ago when Norfolk-based Internet company Infinet got out of the business of developing commercial web sites.

The four founders worked in the department that Infinet shut down: Dave Willman, 37, as its manager; Alan Dudley, 26, and Marck Weiss, 29, as programmers; D. David Childress, 27, as a site developer.

Web site development wasn't part of Infinet's core business, but both Stratum's would-be founders and Infinet recognized the potential in the niche, Willman said.

The four decided to give it a shot. They began talking to Infinet affiliates, with Infinet's blessing, even before leaving their offices. Early on, they established a business with some newspapers owned by Gannett Co., a media giant which along with Landmark Communications and Knight-Ridder owns Infinet.

``We didn't turn anything down during that time, but it was amazing to us what was coming to the table,'' Willman said. ``We were talking to Gannett and some others. We were like, `What if we get this job?' ''

Business was coming in and they were hardly set up. They moved into a small, one-room cottage off Granby Street in Norfolk. They hastened the move by coming in one weekend to haul away a collection of military memorabilia that had been stored in the cottage.

For desks, they bought a thick piece of glass as a desktop and laid it over two $20 file cabinets.

In other words, they had a few out-of-pocket expenses to get setup, but instead of taking out a big loan, they bought equipment on a ``pay as you go'' basis.

``We were able to do enough work with this computer to fund another computer,'' Weiss said, ``and able to do enough with those computers to fund another computer. Now, it's all paid for.''

Their strategy is equally low-key. They chose the name Stratum, a geological term, because they work on the programming behind a Web site, the layers below the surface.

They don't mind being behind a customer's Web development efforts. They will consult on what kind of Web site a company needs, then let the company build it. Or Stratum will build it for the company, then train the company's employees to maintain it.

One thing they don't do is ``host'' Web sites: That would require expensive computer servers and would distract them from their business-to-business focus, Willman said.

``I guess that's what makes us a '90s company,'' Willman says. ``We're not looking to own something. We're not going to stand beside our partner and say, `This is our part, pay us for it.' We're as invisible as you want us to be.''

That's how it's working at one of Stratum's big contracts. Sentara Health System hired the company to create an intranet, an internal network. Sentara needed to ``jump start'' its efforts, faster than it would take for its own employees to do the job, said Phil Lanzafame, Sentara's Internet product manager.

``They were professional in their presentation,'' said Lanzafame. ``It wasn't a slap together, back-of-the-envelope and a handshake sort of thing.''

Web developing requires numerous skills, Lanzafame said, so the fact that the backgrounds of Stratum's founders range from design and development to hard-core programming is an asset.

Stratum's founders have no job titles. That way the company can be flexible enough to allow, say, Dudley to be the project manager on a job that is more programming intensive or Childress to take the lead on a design-heavy job.

``Once we get a job, we do assign roles,'' Childress said. ``We're not just four guys in a room.''

Taking a management role is something Dudley never thought he'd do. Dudley's the computer language guru, and his beard and long hair add to the image.

``That's the worse thing you can do to a programmer - make him a manager,'' Dudley says.

But he's adjusting. On a bulletin board inside Stratum's front door, Willman writes quotes under the headline: Things I thought I'd never hear Alan Dudley say.

Last week's quote: ``I'll pencil you in next Tuesday.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

BILL TIERNAN

The Virginian-Pilot

From left, Alan Dudley, Marck Weiss, Dave Willman and D. David

Childress pose in front of the 17th Street home, the white building,

of the Web site development company they founded about three months

ago when Infinet, the Internet company they worked for, closed their

department.

A mountain bike and cactus round out the offices of Stratum New

Media. The business' founders kept start-up costs low by buying

equipment on an as-needed basis. KEYWORDS: PROFILE