On March 1 it’s always a good reminder to look back at marchFIRST — an example of what big money and power thought was a good idea just 10 years ago.
- The original USWeb was founded in 1995 by a group of former Novell executives (Joe Firmage, Toby Corey, and Sheldon Laube)
- USWeb went public with an IPO in 1997
- USWeb agreed to buy the offline advertising agency, CKS Group, in a stock transaction in September 1998
- Whitman-Hart acquired Four Points Digital LLC, Fulcrum Solutions Ltd., and BALR Corp in 1999.
- USWeb/CKS and Whittman-Hart merged in March 2000 to form marchFIRST, Inc.
- John Guynn, a copywriter at Mckinney & Silver, thought of the name marchFIRST.
- Bernard resigned in March, and marchFIRST went bankrupt in April 2001
- Two companies (Avenue A and Divine) acquired several offices in April 2001
- Whittman-Hart re-emerged as a separate company under Bernard
- USWeb is currently an Internet services firm copying the name of the original USWeb
- Divine purchased several companies that struggled after the dot com bust, including some remnants of marchFIRST
- Divine went bankrupt in Feb 2003 (in April 2003, Divine’s assets were sold at auction)
- Gus Mueller received his final paycheck from marchFIRST, 6 years late in the summer of 2007.
Are we smarter today?
Jeff Koke
on 01 Mar 10You mention “Bernard” in bullet 7, but he isn’t mentioned prior to that so I have no idea why that’s important. Also, who is Gus Mueller?
Jeff Koke
on 01 Mar 10Ah… now I see there is more detail in the Wikipedia article. Didn’t notice the link at first.
scott miller
on 02 Mar 10Many attempts to apply lipstick to a pig. Good history lesson.
Emily
on 02 Mar 10I worked there.
I originally worked for USWeb.
We knew the merger probably would not be good because we immediately recognized the culture clash between USWeb/CKS and Whittman-Hart. One team was pretty happy, profitable, and creative doing fixed bid work. We had a great team dynamic and were breaking new ground. The other was a traditional staff augmentation model. They don’t really mesh very well.
They announced the name with a full-page ad in many major newspapers accompanied by a mailed tube of red plastic cellophane (the Red Film) that you were supposed to put over the ad to see the name.
I saw a lot of co-workers (employees) lose a LOT of personal money on underwater stocks and unpaid healthcare bills.
We watched the Yahoo message boards to learn our fate when it started turning bad. It was funny, yet sad.
Lots of Aeron chairs ended up homeless…
marchFIRST was a true mini-Enron, yet with not near the publicity. Real people lost real money. Employees just doing what they were hired to do and putting their money where they were STRONGLY encouraged to do so – company stock – imagine that.
Good times.
Thanks for the mention. We always have a drinking party on this day. Hey wait! Everyone’s at the bar. Gotta go!
Thomas
on 02 Mar 10Gus Mueller is (unless it’s someone with the same name) now the man, plan, and canal behind Flying Meat Software, which makes some cool OS X software. FlySketch is one of those only-on-OS X apps that’s at once remarkably cool, super simple, and very very useful.
Rick
on 02 Mar 10In 2000, my company was gearing up for an IPO so we hired marchFirst write up our business plan (wasn’t my idea). And they did it for the low, low price of $250,000! All they did was take our existing business plan and add in some boiler plate dotcom jargon. I still can’t believe they got away with that, and even worse, I can’t believe that companies like mine were brainwashed enough to think that was money well spent.
Chris
on 02 Mar 10marchFirst had to be one of the all time dumb names. It was embarrassing trying to explain to existing clients why we had such a ridiculous name and it became a joke.
Real conversation at a restaurant: “Do you have a reservation for marchFirst?” “Sir, it’s June.”
The sad thing is that some of the original companies were really cool, e.g. Ensemble. We did some great work and got to surf the edge of the web wave.
It’s hard to believe that was 10 years ago.
Chris
on 02 Mar 10Wow, I worked in the Phoenix office of marchFIRST. Our specific office was profitable (so they told me, I was a lowly designer) and we went under with the rest of the company because we couldn’t find a buyer for our office.
“Uncle Bob” Bernard was instrumental in bringing the company down.
Homepage screenshot: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ctingom/4400234660/
Kristian Andersen
on 02 Mar 10But they had the sweeeeetest business cards – http://bit.ly/bQRgDw
Nate Burgos
on 02 Mar 10What rhymes with Viant? Remember Zefer?
Dave
on 02 Mar 10marchFIRST was an odd experience for the Milwaukee office. We had good customers, good projects, some that lasted for years longer than the silly name, lost money of stock-options, and fancy chairs. We had a meeting room with Aeron chairs around the conference room table – my only regret is I didn’t wheel my stuff out of the office on an $800 chair and keep on going…
Rudiger
on 02 Mar 10Homepage screenshot: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ctingom/4400234660/
That’s a pretty good design, especially for the time!
Dina Amadril
on 02 Mar 10We started talking with marchFirst sometime in 2000. I remember they gave us a little booklet of web jargon and ackronyms that they used all the time. This was so we could understand what they were saying.
It was like an English to marchFirst dictionary. Evidently, they weren’t there to understand us – we were supposed to understand them.
That was some of the most foolish business I have ever been exposed too – all ego no substance.
Rick
on 02 Mar 10I was a USWeb customer back before all the mergers. Then we covered the USWEB/CKS/WhitmannHart/MarchFirst debacle at eprairie.
Old Bob Bernard died of a heart attack back in 2007. Lots of people might have lost money, but apparently not Bob. He owned an entire Lincoln Park block at the time of his death. Tore down most of it and made a huge place.
That was an interesting time. Someone needs to write the book (Brad Spirrison?). It would be an interesting story. As would the Art.com story.
:: r ::
on 02 Mar 10I’m sitting in the old SF marchFirst offices in an Aeron chair reading this. I was a .commie back when all this happened and when we did an office remodel I discovered all sorts of lost marchFirst business cards stuck behind old cubicle panels. Now the building is Eventbrite, Yammer, OpenDNS and Zendesk with Sony and an SF office of Playdom up top.
I recall that marchFirst was also building a new office on 5th and Howard right by the old Pentagram SF offices just before they imploded. My friend was a casualty of that mess but we all learned from it.
kc! Bradshaw
on 02 Mar 10Originally hired by USWeb/CKS at the end of 1999, until our 4 fully-functioning original CKS offices (across from Apple in Cupertino) were swallowed by the whole mess and tore up our amazing team. Received my final paycheck in 2007. Still to this day use my free, aluminum “macrhFIRST™ experience builder” clipboard in a bustling freelance design business, working on amazing projects with ex-M1 employees. Experience builder indeed.
George
on 02 Mar 10It’s actually ‘divine’ and not ‘Divine’. The CEO of divine (Flip Flipowski) later became the CEO an co-founder of Silkroad Technology (and other companies under that name).
Christopher
on 03 Mar 10Wow, what memories! At Washington DC, I was with USWeb and was part of the marchFIRST thingy. Good Times? The “cloud” is back!
Christopher
on 03 Mar 10What ever happened to USWeb founder, UFO Joe (a.k.a. Joe Firmage)? At Chicago, I am still hearing stories about Bob Bernard of Whittman-Hart. I miss those days… Still, and always, there will be business and computers… Much I have learned!
cj
on 05 Mar 10@ Emily Those little Aerons didn’t go homeless. I remember the logjam of people wheeling those suckers out of the Auction warehouse.
This discussion is closed.