First off, Marshall Brain is his real name. Second, the self-described “normal, average American guy,” who was born in Santa Monica 39 years ago, started out just wanting to write an article or two that people like him could understand. So, about three years ago, he wrote a how-to article about car engines and put it on his personal Web page. Eventually, he did 100 or so similar articles about how things work (for instance, the pendulum clock, batteries, electrical motors, etc.). By December 1998, Web tracking service Hitbox.com was saying Brain had had 94,000 visitors to his site in a single month. The following month, his Web site won the “Coolest Site on the Internet” award from CoolSiteOfTheDay.com. At that point, Brain said, “I started to get the impression that I might be onto something a little bigger than I had suspected.” And today, howstuffworks.com with offices in Woodland Hills and Cary, N.C. gets a million hits a month. It also supplies content to the Los Angeles Times’ new Tech Times section, the USA Today Web site, its own children’s magazine (How Stuff Works Express) and 600 other newspapers and magazines through a syndication agreement with Koz.com. What’s more, the company (incorporated in September 1999 and, naturally, funded with venture capital) has managed so far to avoid the problems that have befallen so many dot-coms that started out much the same way. “We’re either na & #271;ve or geniuses,” Brain said. For one thing, when founder Brain and company President Marco Fregenal went out to look for venture capital almost two years ago, they didn’t find much. (Still, you won’t get them to say they had a hard time finding any.) Their first round of funding finally came this past January and amounted to $900,000. In the second round in May, they raised $4.5 million, and they are now seeking their third round of $2 million to $3 million. “We were blessed by not receiving a lot of venture capital,” Brain says now. He also said the seeds of many dot-coms’ demise has been the fact they were not so blessed. Venture capitalists give you money, he said, “and you’re expected to spend it.” “So, how are you going to spend $100 million if you’re two guys and an idea? You hire 1,000 people and spend $50 million on advertising.” On the other hand, Brain and his colleagues would like to believe howstuffworks.com attracts visitors and business because those who have found it like it. Just for the exposure In fact, Allison Walsh, the firm’s vice president of media development, said that’s how she managed the deal to provide content to the L.A. Times’ Tech Times. She had made contact with an organization called the Special Librarians Association, one of whose members was a researcher at the Times. And her husband is an avid fan of howstuffworks. The Web site itself is full of articles like “How Radio Works,” “How Christmas Works” and even “How Christmas Lights Work.” And, of course, on the morning of Nov. 8, there was suddenly a need for a “How the Electoral College Works” and, a few weeks before that, a “How Submarines Work,” following the crash of a Russian sub. Corresponding with the theme of Tech Times, there have been how-to articles on e-mail, DVDs and other tech-related subjects. While howstuffworks.com has a traditional syndication deal with Koz.com, Walsh said, “We’re not doing (Tech Times) for revenue right now. We’re doing it for the 1.1 million readers a day.” She also said the most recent agreements with the Times, USA Today and Koz.com are too new to tell how much business will be generated as a result. In fact, Brain and Walsh were both reluctant to talk about revenues in any but the most general terms. “We are a privately-held company,” Brain said, “and we plan to act as one.” He did say, referring to the hoped-for third round of financing, “For us to break even, we need about $2 million.” While refusing to refer to either www.discovery.com or Encyclopedia Britannica’s Web site as competitors (“We’re one of the companies that help people to learn more,” Brain said.), he did say information on his Web site is perhaps accessible in a way that information on others is not. “There are places that make it a lot more complicated than it should be,” Brain said. “We want material that people can understand.” That probably would explain the baby pictures of himself that accompany the Web site’s article: “How ‘How Stuff Works’ Works.”
