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Changing with the times
Sunday, March 26, 2000 By Ken Zapinski, Associate Editor/Business
The Wang brothers are at it again.
Just a few years out of Carnegie Mellon University, the Taiwan natives are morphing their hot company, Pittsburgh Direct Technology, yet again and changing its name to iVenture Labs.com to reflect its new direction.
Henry Wang, chairman, and Tommy Wang, chief executive officer, are essentially closing down the computer consulting business at the heart of the company to focus on birthing and growing other tech start-ups.
The engineers and programmers who previously worked on projects for outside clients will instead provide technical expertise and support to the independent companies that will take shape within iVenture's headquarters.
In addition, iVenture is expanding to create legal, accounting, personnel and other units to help bright people who might have a good tech idea but no clue how to put together a business.
Already six companies are growing in iVenture's building on Melwood Avenue in North Oakland, one of which -- USInterns.com, a Web site that matches college students with intern employers -- made its debut last week. And iVentures, which is trying to go it alone without venture capital funding, is looking for a new, bigger home.
Starting a business in Pittsburgh was a lot harder when Pittsburgh Direct was trying to start on its original mission of compiling a directory of local Web sites. "Pittsburgh has changed tremendously in the last 21/2 years," Henry Wang said.
But not all is rosy. Henry just had another birthday, making him three years older than his CEO. He's practically ancient, after all, now that he's 26.
"I can't keep this up," Henry quipped.
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