But the crowd of potential customers seemed genuinely jazzed by what Scient had to offer.
But, what the heck, Scient founder Eric Greenberg was offering him close to 12% of the company.
Those relationships helped get the first meetings with three businesses with which Scient is now in serious discussions.
Robert Howe bagged a long career at IBM to take the chief's job at Scient, an e-commerce consulting firm.
Only this was a monthly gathering of digerati that featured a speaker from Scient, the San Francisco-based Internet consultancy.
That relationship helped Scient set up its first foreign outpost in November 1999.
Another Web shop, Scient, has 62% of its equity in the hands of its top two executives and venture backers.
Its satellite office in Hong Kong, Scient has taken on such clients as the steel exchange IsteelAsia and the Hong Kong wireless firm Sunday.
Wright finally settled on 40-year-old Dan Stone , former head of a division at Scient that built Web businesses for media and entertainment companies.
In May 1999, 15 months after he arrived, Scient went public.
Scient landed a client and hired several people in the audience.
Look at Zollars of Neoforma and George Conrades at Akamai, Carleton Fiorina of Hewlett-Packard or Gregory Brown at Micromuse, Richard Braddock at Priceline.com or Robert Howe at Scient.
New firms specialising in technology and e-commerce, such as Razorfish, MarchFIRST, Scient and iXL (the latter two have since merged) commanded the spotlight only to crash with the dotcom market.
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