Ben Watson can't sit still. He rolls back and forth in his chair. Rocks. Jumps to the whiteboard, markers in hand, drawing "collaboration clouds," overlapping ellipses in gray-black and faded red enclosing his left-handed scrawl.
He was preparing for the public launch of his latest venture, Ensemble Collaboration, at a coming out-party for invited guests at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. The launch was scheduled to coincide with the annual gathering of the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), which attracts hundreds of exhibitors and thousands of delegates.
"Every potential customer that we want or ever would want," was at the show, he said.
Mr. Watson left New Brunswick six years ago, a 27-year old dot-com millionaire who'd just sold his first company to an American on-line learning firm drawn like a moth to his 25 per cent monthly growth rate. He's back home again preparing for another grab at the brass ring.
"It's the curse of the entrepreneur," he says, trying to settle back into his chair. "It's an addiction. You crave the ups and downs."
Unlike his first solo effort, he has surrounded himself this time with a group of young executives with similar dot-com experiences, and is convinced they're onto the Next Big Thing in on-line learning: Collaboration.
"The power of the Internet is the ability to connect people, to tap into their collective knowledge," he says.
Ensemble hopes to make that connection in two ways: through one-on-one mentoring for existing on-line learning content, and by building collaboration software that pulls together disparate and often incompatible on-line resources.
Mr. Watson says the primary focus of the e-learning industry has been content development, which is fast becoming an easily replicable, scalable activity. And that ease of creation, he says, is quickly turning off-the-shelf content into a commodity. But a larger problem facing the industry is the lack of context for the broader learning experience.
"Learning today is a very lonely experience. What we're missing is the network effect," he says, back at the whiteboard again.
Mr. Watson points to three Internet powerhouses - Google, Amazon and eBay- and says their business models hold the key to the future of on-line learning.
Google, for instance, exemplifies the search for the best answer in the shortest possible time. Amazon.com has demonstrated the powerful attraction of reviews and like-minded recommendations. And eBay has shown that carefully designed policies and technologies can create a level of trust that compels complete strangers to buy and sell with confidence.
"eBay does product and goods transactions. Ensemble is about doing knowledge transactions," he says.
From Poly Sci to Dot-ComsterMr. Watson was originally intent on a career in political science and international relations. Thanks to a glowing report from his professors at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, he enrolled in the master's program at Glasgow University prior to completing his undergraduate degree.
But his Scottish academic experience- a robed professor droning on day after day from the text without even acknowledging his students, never mind interacting with them- was a huge disappointment.
"By the end of the first term, half of the class had been replaced by tape recorders," Mr. Watson said. "I mean, why go to class? I said 'This is awful' and left."
Back home in Fredericton, he landed a job with the local Academy of Learning franchise, a training company that was using audio tapes, workbooks, computer software and live facilitators to help people prepare for the burgeoning demand for workers with keyboard skills.
"I was a facilitator," he says. "If the students had any questions, I was there in this quasi-classroom environment to help them."
Forever discontent with the status quo, Mr. Watson tried unsuccessfully to persuade his bosses to make greater use of steadily advancing computer technology, such as CD-ROMs and the beginnings of the commercial Internet.
"They said: 'No, we're happy with the audio tapes."
So he quit and started planning his foray into the growing market for certification of computer skills. He also went after the biggest game he could find: Microsoft Corp.
Microsoft liked his idea of combining their course content with live, on-line mentors, and in February 1996, with a $10,000 loan backed by the provincial government, marketing support from the software giant, and all the funding his credit card limit would allow, he launched Scholars.com.
His combination of low price about half the cost of equivalent classroom training and the human touch- live on-line mentors available at first for 12-hours a day and eventually around the clock- attracted students from far and wide looking for an income boost through certification for software products such as Windows 95 and Windows NT Workstation.
Less than a year after the Scholars.com launch, Smartforce (now Skillsoft) bought his company, turning Mr. Watson into a 27-year old millionaire and shipping him to Phoenix, Az. He says he thought he would be with Skillsoft for life, but the company's decision to focus on content rather than collaboration ignited the entrepreneurial spark and sent Mr. Watson back into start-up mode.
Ensemble has already raised about $500,000 in venture capital, is working on a second round of financing, and has grown from four to 24 since opening its doors last fall. Now it's up to the Ensemble team to wow the Washington crowd.
"At this point, we have no revenues and no customers, so it's nothing but a dream," he says, finally settling into his chair.
Then he surges forward again. "You know what's going to happen this time, so there's no kidding yourself. You know you're going to wake up screaming in the middle of the night. You know there are going to be issues with payroll. It takes a special person to start a company. You have to be a little crazy."
