#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.
