Brooklyn-born brothers Jack and Murray Hidary each
netted a whopping $69 million on paper from the
public stock offering of their Internet company
EarthWeb.

Shares in the company more than tripled in their first
day of trading to close at 481116 - up a staggering
341116. The issue traded as high as $59 a share.

Chief Executive Officer Jack, 30, started the New
York-based online provider of technology information
for web designers in 1994 with 27-year-old brother
Murray, an executive vice president, and friend Nova
Spivack, 29.

Spivack, also an executive vp, had a $39 million paper
profit.

The Hidarys come from a family of entrepreneurs.
Jack became familiar with the Internet when he got
involved in clinical neural research at the National
Institute of Health. The projects involved the Internet,
which was used to link national brain research
databases.

When he began developing websites and saw the
difficulty in finding certain technologies, Jack saw the
opportunity to have information for web designers in
one place. Hence, Developers.com, EarthWeb's
flagship service, was born.

The site receives about 1.8 million visitors per month.

EarthWeb is yet another Internet company to have a
successful public offering without showing a profit. It
lost $7.8 million in 1997 on sales of $1.1 million. It
lost $5.3 million in the first nine months of 1998 on
revenue of $1.9 million. The company is valued at
$384.81 million.

The company's business model is two-tiered, getting
its revenue from advertising on Developers.com as
well as fees from its research database, IT
Knowledge.

Some of the $29.4 million raised in the IPO will go
toward an increased marketing and sales effort.

The timing for the IPO couldn't have been better.

The Internet sector in general has done well in the last
two weeks, said Paul Bard, an analyst with
Renaissance Capitol in Greenwich, Conn. It's being
driven by eBay, which is up over six times its opening
price.

The timing's really good. Had it been a few weeks
ago, I don't think they would have made it out the
door, said Bard.

After a lackluster Internet IPO market that began this
summer, several companies, including TheGlobe.com,
Vignette and Healtheon, postponed their IPOs. But
now, with market conditions improving, some
companies might jump back into the IPO market.

In fact, The Globe.com, a web community, will be
priced today.

The market may have been hungry for an Internet IPO
since the category began surging in the last month.
eBay, which saw its shares triple in its first day of
trading, held its IPO in September. Broadcom Corp.
also tripled in its first day earlier this year.

The fear factor went into a cave and greed came
raging out, said Francis Gaskins of Gaskins IPO
Desktop www.gaskinsco.com.

The Internet sector was hot and this was the only
place to go, he said.

According to Renaissance Capital, eight of the ten
IPOs with the highest returns in 1998 were for
Internet-related companies.

-- Midknight - 11/12/98