Doing the Deal / CosmoCom Hitches Its Wagon to a Star

By Paul Schreiber
Newsday, Inc. December 30, 1997

They wanted the world, but it was taken, so the founders of a microscopic company with a grand scheme went to a part of the universe that was still left.

"Names are tough," Ari Sonesh says. "One of the issues was to have an available name on the Internet. Everything today with `Web' and `world' is pretty much taken. We did think about `cosmos,' but `cosmos' was taken."

Which is how the company Sonesh founded 17 months ago became CosmoCom Inc. "The cosmos and communications, which is what we are dealing with," Sonesh says.

Since then, the young Hauppauge company with big ideas has lined up $3.5 million worth of investors and, more significantly, been chosen as a partner by the world's third-largest software company, Computer Associates International, the Islandia giant that had $4 billion in sales in its most recent fiscal year.

That is approximately $4 billion more than CosmoCom, which began offering its initial software product - for free - only three weeks ago and has no income yet. The philosophy is to get the world's attention before going after its pocketbook.

"What we're doing is going to change the way of doing business on the Web," says Stephen Kowarsky, 51, CosmoCom's executive vice president. "I don't think there's any doubt about it."

CosmoCom's product lets people talk to people, an old concept, over the Internet. Its CosmoCall software is the Web equivalent of the "automatic call distributor" systems used to receive and direct large volumes of incoming telephone calls. The call distributor determines such information as the phone or account number of the caller, holds the calls in the order they were received, and routes them to an employee who simultaneously sees the caller's buying history or the item of
interest. Users include banks, catalog houses, big retailers and utilities.

"Sometimes the information you want is not in the computer," Kowarsky says. "Sometimes it's in the computer, but you need the mind of another person to successfully get it out. It seems like I'm stating the obvious, but the way you do it today is you get somebody on the phone and you consult." CosmoCom's product allows that contact over the Internet.

Sooner or later, CosmoCom believes, customers will need personal attention, which they cannot now get through the computer screen. CosmoCall works with Windows 95 and Microsoft's networking software, letting Internet users hook up with people at the company they are interested in by clicking on the "contact us" link on the company's Web site.

If the company's computers are equipped with video cameras, the caller will see the agent who accepted the call. If not it will be a voice conversation. The item of interest - a bank statement, say, or a software application - will appear on both ends to simplify the discussion.

The process of integration began in 1995 in the head of Ari Sonesh, who was then vice president of engineering, operations and technical support at Comverse Technology, a Woodbury-based company that had grown in a dozen years from a score of employees and no revenue to 1,400 and $300 million. He had been hired at Comverse by Kowarsky, who was its
vice president of business development.

Both enjoyed the fruits of Comverse's growth, but there is a great difference between employee and founder. "The next step is to really go and do it on your own, take the risks, and hopefully it's the start of satisfaction that you can create something," says Sonesh, 45.

CosmoCom's third founder is Stephen Dellutri, 29, who also worked at Comverse and then at a succession of large companies, most recently Citicorp International Communications Inc. "It was certainly a risk," Dellutri says, "but this is an opportunity of a lifetime."

The opportunity provided by Computer Associates was for CosmoCom's "contact-enabled application" to become part of Jasmine, a highly touted new object-oriented database developed by CA and Fujitsu Ltd. With CosmoCall and the software products of about 30 other partners inside it, Jasmine debuted three weeks ago at the Internet World convention at the Javits Center in Manhattan. Jasmine allows users to work with text, pictures, audio and video in ways that before were either not possible or much too difficult for widespread use. One of its goals is to aid in the development of Web pages.

In addition to its presence in Jasmine, CosmoCom is offering a version of the software free. It allows Internet contact with as many as three agents of a company. "We'll make our money once people need more than three," Sonesh says. The price then becomes about $6,000 per agent.

CosmoCom now has a dozen employees, including the founders, and hopes to add more than 20 in 1998.

"Within two years, maybe as soon as a year from now, it will be second nature, as much as the Web, that the Web has personal access to people as part of it," Kowarsky says.

The question, as always, is whether the start-up will savor the moment alone, or even be around. "It's a matter of execution," Kowarsky concedes. "Will we be able to pull it off and establish ourselves as the market leaders?"


Copyright 1997, Newsday Inc.
DOING THE DEAL / CosmoCom Hitches Its Wagon to a Star., pp A34.