#1. Bill Nussey, 34 Chief Executive Officer/iXL, Inc.
Bill Nussey is what every traditional consultancy fears most: A venture capitalist turned consultant, who dreams of building the next great global consultancy.
"People thought I was crazy," explains Nussey, who says he decided to leave VC firm Greylock when he saw how the Web had begun to mushroom opportunities in the consulting space. "Traditionally, consultancies could carve out niche expertises, but the Internet demanded such a broad number of skills simultaneously. I saw this opportunity emerging to build a new breed of global [consultancy]," says Nussey, an engineer by training, who by the age of 28 had cofounded, built, and sold an e-mail software company. At Greylock, Nussey became involved in funding such technology upstarts as Northpoint, DoubleClick, and, of course iXL — the revenue leader of the fast-charging upstart clan known to Wall Street insiders as e-consulting pure plays.
Having already nabbed coveted Fortune 1000 accounts away from Big Five and even strategy consultancies, the question is no longer whether the pure plays are true consulting competitors, but whether they are now scalable, or capable of adding the talent and expertise they'll need to compete globally. Here, too, Nussey's company, now approaching a half- billion dollars in sales, is emerging as the early leader. Having worked to integrate the systems and processes it needs to support greater head count across varied geographies, iXL earlier this year bagged what might be the largest e-strategy contract ever awarded — a deal inked last February with Virgin Atlantic that promises to bring in $50 million in e-business services revenue for iXL during its first year alone.
To win, iXL beat out a roster of e-consulting outfits that included high-flying Sapient Corp., whose stock recently traded at seven times iXL's. Unlike those of other pure plays, iXL's stock has never generated headlines, and neither has Nussey's pay package. (While the former has recently been trading under $20 a share, the latter could be deemed competitive for the profession.) iXL is today the aggregate of 36 different firms — 28 of which were acquired in 1998. However, Nussey now appears willing to part with this aggressive growth through acquisition strategy first hatched by Bert Ellis, iXL's founder and consummate dealmaker. While it was Ellis who made the initial land grab, it's Nussey who is now tasked with firing up the four-year-old consultancy's organic growth engines, lowering employee turnover, and garnering the firm's first profit.
Nussey's success now depends on savvy portfolio management — a skill set well nurtured by his VC roots and amplified by iXL's rich portfolio of large clients. Currently that portfolio includes such behemoths as General Electric Corp. and Delta Air Lines, each of which, besides owning a portion of the consultancy, has committed itself to buy a minimum amount of e-business services annually. In the case of GE, this IOU was valued at a minimum of $20 million its first year. But iXL's large-account prowess doesn't stop there. Home Depot, Federal Express, and Chase Manhattan are now among the building blocks of Nussey's "next great global consultancy." "It's not so much the number of people within the firm that matters, but the concentration of expertise and the kind of relationship that exists with clients," explains Nussey, who likes to boast that in the last year, iXL has milked more e-business revenue out of the Fortune 1000 than any Big Five consultancy. While Nussey's claim cannot be substantiated, it does draw forth one of the newly ratified dictums of the e-world: Size doesn't matter.
It is just such decrees that are now opening a new chapter in consulting history, and that have put iXL's CEO in the spotlight. The 34-year-old consultant, who could moonlight as an MTV veejay, sports a Scott McNealy smile and is fond of repeating the mantra "iXL rocks!" But few doubt this Harvard Business School grad, whose crowded resume lists a stint as a McKinsey consultant, means anything but business.
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