The Internet Business History of Bill Span
 

                      March 2001- April 2001  - The Federal Group,  Woodinville, WA  Business Development & Webmaster

  • Co-created and coded a web-based system to sell/list property and acquire/manage new real estate and  mortgage leads.




 

January 2000 – Oct. 2000 -  Gettuit.Net, Kirkland, WA  Director of Strategic Relations

  • Conceived and produced an online directory of Real Estate and Financial service providers. (Pictured above)
    Hired the programmers and managed the source code development/strategic relations of this online exchange.
     
  • Site was designed to facilitate instantaneous sharing of leads (referrals) among professional
    services practitioners. Messages and the actual leads would be sent to/from any device, such
    as office/home phone, e-mail, fax, pda or cell phone. Each member had ability to create/manage
    their own targeted lists.
     
  • Proprietary CRM functionality was embedded into their personally created websites. From the site,
    members could send messages, via the web, in their own voice to multiple devices and group lists
    that recipients opted into from the site of the member.
     
  • Members communications data stayed real-time correct. Recipients could change/delete devices
    and contact data via web. The future system would follow member via time and geographic position.
    System carried the viral message of the client company as a written or verbal tagline like Hotmail
    tags a signature line to rapidly promote the creation of another user.

     

 

 

May 1999 – 2000  Gettuit.com          Kirkland, WA  Director of Product Development

  • Hired as second employee.  Led development of company's  first product, the Loan  Engine (pictured above)
     
  • Designed and maintained the company�s first website.
     
  • Established the first email servers and co-created dozens of product names and their related URL’s
     
  • Discovered the channel to and gave the first presentation to procure the lead billionaire investor who
    funded a portion of the company with 2.5 million dollars.
     
  • Interviewed several potential CTO’s, found/hired the first salespeople, and the head of  IT network, and many more.
     
  • Participated in the initial product positioning, pricing and branding, as well as the first executable
    demo with Hornall-Anderson.  Company was positioned to carry any Application Service Provider as a integrated vendor.
    It would have offered almost any app or service as an online rentable app. Was positioned to be  primary rival to
    the Microsoft.net strategy.
     
  • Discovered and catalogued the first 250 application service providers, which became the core products presented
    in the company’s offering of integrated online service partners.
     
  • Conceived and launched the company’s first commercial product, a desktop client application, which
    linked to three online service providers to integrate the process of finding a Realtor, a property and
    obtaining a mortgage or refinance.

 

Copy and paste this address: http://www.hadw.com/sites/gettuit/getuit.html into an Explorer Browser to see our website
we developed 1999.  That was the most advanced business website in the world at the time. Click on the floating balls!

 

1998 NetroMedia Honolulu, Hawaii   Owner

  • Founded company that built and hosted small business websites local to the islands and focused
    on the mortgage industry. Built several large ecommerce sites.


     

1997-1998 World Wide Desk, Inc  dba Profit Partner   Kirkland, WA      Co-Founder

  • Co-founded Internet company in 1998 with Kevin Young and another partner. Formed company
    to offer online small business services. Lead a series of meetings with the top executives of
    Costco
    to discuss the provisioning of business websites to their Executive Club Member base of
    several dozen million members in a package the would be sold in a box off the shelf".

    Spent almost a year analyzing the needs of small business people and how they could benefit
    from the Internet.  Specifically what type of website and what features of it would best help them
    and their unique needs by vertical business niches.

1997 - 1998 FIRST Technologies, Inc Kaneohe, Hawaii   Owner

  • Co-founded company that was formed to host sales organizations whose members were able to create
    web pages and communicate through branded email accounts linked to the corporate master site.
     
  • More than 4,000 salespeople created their own unique sites and email accounts. FIRST Technologies
    wrote the code and private branded the package for online use by large sales teams.
     
  • This proprietary software was demonstrated an enthusiastic  Steve Ballmer in early 1997.
     
  • This technology, created, over five years ago, had the same core features as AOL, GeoCities,
    theglobe.com or any other virtual community.
     
  • These sites were extremely advanced at the time -- they were web-based Intranets that could
    duplicate themselves. Members sent/received internal/external branded e-mail; used private imbedded
    chatrooms and message boards; and could track new members in real time. These interactions,
    tracking and control were based entirely within networks that we created and hosted.
     
  • Met six times with the top executives and web strategists of Costco, showing them how they could
    deploy our system to their 30 million members.

1992-1997 World Telecom Group, Inc. Honolulu, Hawaii   Executive Director. independent rep

  • One of the first people in America to promote and market the prepaid phonecard, named AmeriVox.
     
  • Sold over 20 million dollars of phonecards through an 8,000 member sales team and its accounts.
    Acquired and handled several celebrity royalty accounts including Burt Reynolds, Konishiki and the
    whale artist Wyland.
     
  • World Telecom Group, Inc., the makers of AmeriVox  invented the phonecard. They were the
    first to brand the new product to corporate clients like 3M as a premium or incentive. Company
    had exclusive worldwide licensing agreements with Elvis Presley, JFK, Richard Petty, Ken Griffey Jr.
    and other celebrities.
     
  • At the advent of the commercial Internet (1994) I utilized the web and email to establish
    and run a affiliate/referral program and build a large customer base of several hundred thousand
    people
    . Used predictive dialers with IVR (interactive voice response), broadcast fax/email and
    affiliate websites to sell product, recruit a 8,000 member sales team and communicate with same.
     
  • Created the first promotional account with a private-labeled phonecard in the U.S. and the launched
    first fundraiser (NPO) account with an American telecard.
 

 Education    1978 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - Bachelor of Arts Degree on an athletic  scholarship

              


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