Robert Lessin
Wealth and Wit

Initial public offerings have always seemed to prove the axiom that it takes money to make money. Apart from institutional investors, only a select few -- the richest, most preferred clients of the richest, most preferred investment houses -- ever got a piece. Upstart online investment bank Wit Capital changed that in 1997 by offering allocations to anyone with a fast modem. Now, in theory, the Internet could make wired investors as rich as wired auctioneers. Main Street loved the idea; Wall Street remained unconvinced. Then, in 1998, Robert Lessin, former vice-chairman of Salomon Smith Barney, came on board. Early this year, Lessin -- himself a New England-raised Harvard MBA -- supplemented Wit's management with a team of pedigreed financial vets like himself. Then he persuaded Goldman Sachs to invest in the firm, and its real-world visibility skyrocketed. "There is almost no such thing as a pure stand-alone Internet company," Lessin says. "And if you're going to affiliate with any financial service firm in the world, it should be Goldman Sachs." Wit usually gets only a small cut of Internet IPOs -- like those of EarthWeb.com -- and with individual investors, the company relies on volume. In June, Wit had its own IPO. The stock price is holding steady at $20, well above the offering price of $9. Wit probably won't turn a profit for another two years, but on the Internet, making money takes a backseat. "Right now, it's all about building a brand, not building capital," Lessin points out. "And the thing we've done most right is create a brand. Twelve months ago, no one knew what Wit was. Now everyone does."
Michael Steele

Woodson Merrell
Medicine Man

Five years ago, Kava Kava and Saint-John's-wort sounded like something you'd get from an old lady with a broom, and "mind-body" therapies were the province of small wooded communities in Northern California. Now they're big business. At the forefront of the alternative-medicine revolution is Dr. Woodson Merrell, who has spent the past year creating the Center for Health and Healing at Beth Israel Hospital. Next May, the $10 million center will bring a blend of conventional medicine and complementary modalities -- homeopathy, acupuncture, herbal remedies, biofeedback -- to an expected 36,000 patients. "It was unfathomable five years ago that we'd be anywhere close to where we are right now," says Merrell. "When I hung up my shingle back in 1979, it became clear to me that I didn't have the tools to treat 70 percent of my patients. There are a lot of conditions, particularly chronic diseases, where Western medicine needs help." So he spent the past twenty years researching, teaching, and practicing a kind of medicine that can pick up where conventional treatment fails, an endeavor that took him to Shanghai, Tanzania, and Trinidad, as well as to the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the FTC, where he argued on behalf of these new remedies. Already, 50 percent of Americans have used alternative medical therapies, on which they spend nearly $30 billion a year -- almost as much as they pay out of pocket for physician services. "It's nearly unique in the history of medicine that such a large-scale shift would occur as a result of consumer demand," says Merrell. "There's no question. This is the medicine of the future."
Erika Kinetz

Tiffany Dubin
Vintage Vanna

As director of the Sotheby's fashion department, Tiffany Dubin built both business and buzz with decidedly un-Sotheby's-like offerings -- Pucci dresses rather than Picasso paintings. Perhaps more importantly, she has an unerring sense for exactly what part of the past the American public is ready to recycle. "When Playboy sponsored my last sale, 'Cocktails,' people thought I was crazy," she notes. "And now Harper's Bazaar has a whole article on how hip Playboy is." As of January 1, Dubin (who is also the stepdaughter of Sotheby's chairman, A. Alfred Taubman) will be making news in the auction world once again when she joins the Auction Channel, a new cable station that will bring high-profile bidding into viewers' living rooms by fall 2000. Plans call for an interactive take on the Antiques Roadshow -- but Dubin wants something a little sexier. "I want to make it like The Price Is Right," she says. Eventually, she even plans to be on air herself. "I want to be the Vanna White of the Auction Channel." Which isn't to say she plans to leave her past entirely behind. "The first thing I want to do," she says, "is sign up Sotheby's as a partner."
Sarah Bernard