So You Want To Be Chairman Of The Bulletin Board?

Ten years ago, Bob Mahoney, a high-tech consultant to Shell Oil and other companies, started a business-oriented electronic bulletin board in a spare bedroom in his Milwaukee apartment. He used his life savings and equipment bought by Shell to cobble together his system, built around a vintage $5,000 IBM PC; a $7,000, 30-megabyte hard drive storing some 700 files; and a $600, 1,200-baud modem. From such crude beginnings, the Exec-PC board has blossomed into a $1 million-a-year concern run out of an office in Elm Grove, Wis. Mahoney offers 650,000 files, from business programs to games, to more than 10,000 customers, who log on for $75 per year.

Mahoney is part of a burgeoning grass-roots trend: Some 53,000 public-access computer bulletin boards have sprung up in North America, according to Jack Rickard, editor of Boardwatch Magazine. Bulletin boards are the electronic equivalent of clubhouses or taverns, places where users congregate via modem to share software, exchange messages and files, and chitchat. Some board owners, such as Mahoney, make money at this, but it's rare: Rickard estimates only about 5% of boards are profitable, with 10% to 15% breaking even. Most operators are hobbyists who want to schmooze with computer comrades about shared passions, anything from model railroads to bird-watching. Frank Mahoney runs Irish Connection out of his home in Arlington, Va., for people with a Celtic bent.