How Ariba Got Airborne

Rarely does a company's fate turn so decisively in a single day. It was last Nov. 15, and Keith Krach, the former auto executive who pilots Internet startup Ariba Inc., had just made the riskiest move of his professional life. He paid $400 million in stock to acquire TradingDynamics Inc., a company with coveted technology for online business auctions and a paltry $4 million in sales. Ariba desperately needed the tiny company's technology to pass rivals in just-emerging e-marketplaces--Web sites that allow corporate buyers and sellers of goods and services to trade online. Now, Krach had the perfect occasion for spreading the news. TradingDynamics Chief Executive Kirk Cruikshank was to speak that afternoon at a high-profile e-commerce conference. They could storm the stage together.

There was just one problem: how to get there in time. The two CEOs had been delayed by last-minute details of the merger. They were stuck in an office park in Mountain View, Calif., in the heart of gridlocked Silicon Valley. The conference was 30 miles away, at the Claremont Resort & Spa, nestled in the hills above Berkeley. By car, it would take two hours. But Krach wasn't about to let the crucial moment pass. Ariba's investment banker, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, chartered a helicopter. In half an hour, the two execs arrived at the stately 90-year-old resort, and minutes later, Krach and Cruikshank were onstage. "They stole the show," says Andrew T. Duncan, CEO of The EC Company, which makes software for exchanges.