A Second Revenue Stream – Corporate Sales

Dan Miller and Roger Strauch made the observation that the Ask Jeeves question answering could solve a problem that many corporations of that era experienced.  They had websites full of useful information, but users complained that they were hard to navigate.  Further, they often had no clear idea why their users came to their websites or what they were hoping to find.  Running a version of Ask Jeeves on their own website could address both issues.

To test this observation, Dan Miller sent a letter to an executive at Dell Computer outlining our value proposition and requesting to meet.  (This was an “old school” letter sent via the U.S. Postal Service.)  A short time later he received a call from the executive and an invitation to meet.

So, in early 1998, Dan Miller and CTO David Warthen flew to Texas to meet Dell.  We presented to about 15 Dell employees and the following discussion went extremely well.  Dan and Roger’s instincts proved exactly on target.  Soon, Dell became Ask Jeeves first corporate customer.  Compaq and others soon followed, and a team within Ask Jeeves was formed to serve our corporate customers.

This turned out to be a key business development for Ask Jeeves, as it gave us a second revenue stream.  The consumer website generated advertising revenues, while the corporate division generated business revenues while using largely the same technology.  This part of the Ask Jeeves business story continued to be key all the way through and after our IPO, along with continued soaring growth the public website’s usage and revenues.