A Hidden Goldmine Called Inktomi

Three years ago, it was a hard-knock world for Inktomi Corp. The startup set out with grand plans to become as important to the Internet as Microsoft Corp. was to the PC. But its beginnings were anything but regal. The company's six employees were crammed into a 1,200-square-foot office that they could only reach by stepping over homeless people congregating in front of the door. Their conference room was just big enough for a card table and four fold-up chairs--and its porthole-size window peeked out into an elevator shaft.

How times have changed. This month, Inktomi will move into its spiffy new digs--two 100,000-square-foot buildings with breathtaking views of the San Francisco Bay. The company's market cap is $5.5 billion--five times that of Sybase Inc., the onetime software highflier that Inktomi CEO David C. Peterschmidt once led. Its customer list includes such Net heavyweights as Yahoo!, NBC, America Online, and Excite@Home--making it the world's No. 1 search-technology provider. And it's rapidly expanding into promising new markets--like e-commerce. "I want to make sure that when all is said and done, Inktomi will be a company that is core to the Internet," says Peterschmidt.