Greenberg, Jerry

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GREENBERG, JERRY

Jerry Greenberg is the co-founder and co-CEO of Sapient Corp., a firm that provides Internet integration services to organizations like the U.S. Marine Corps, as well as businesses like iwon.com, Janus, Nabisco, Staples, United Airlines, and WalMart. Greenberg handles sales, marketing, and public relations for Sapient, while Stuart Moore, the firm's other co-founder and co-CEO, oversees the more internal operations of the firm. In 1999, both men were included among those listed as the 40 wealthiest Americans under the age of 40 by Fortune. The following year, with sales exceeding $500 million, Sapient became the first company focused solely on Internet integration services to join the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index. Greenberg and Moore each retain an 18 percent stake in the firm.

A native of rural New Jersey, Greenberg studied philosophy at Harvard University before switching his major to economics. After graduation, he began working for various information technology consulting firms, eventually ending up at Cambridge Technology Partners, where he met Moore. In 1991, 25-year-old Greenberg and 29-year-old Moore co-founded their own business, called Sapient Corp., in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Rather than seek outside funding, the partners used $40,000 of their own savings and charged nearly $70,000 on their credit cards. Initially, Sapient focused on offering client-server integration services. Greenberg and Moore set out to differentiate their firm from its many competitors not only by helping customers figure out how technology could eliminate difficulties or enhance operations, but also by creating, executing, and supporting whatever applications they decided to use. Also unlike many other consultancies, Greenberg and Moore offered predetermined prices and deadlines, and linked employee pay, including their own, to client satisfaction.

Employees grew from 95 in 1994 to 213 in 1995, and sales and profits both more than doubled. By then, offices had been opened in San Francisco and New York. Sapient was listed publicly in April of 1996, raising $33 million that was earmarked for expansion efforts. Initially, Greenberg and Moore each retained roughly 36 percent of the firm's stock. Recognizing that many of Sapient's clients were growing increasingly interested in e-commerce, Greenberg began repositioning the firm to offer e-business integration services. He oversaw four small acquisitions—including Adjacency and Studio Archetype, two World Wide Web design firms—that enhanced Sapient's technology and services without overwhelming the firm. Eventually, Sapient was able to offer a full range of e-commerce services that included the planning and creation of online stores. Unlike many CEOs of e-business service firms, Greenberg also kept a tight rein on advertising spending and promotional hype, careful not to make promises his firm could not keep. Greenberg's efforts translated into something that eluded so many e-commerce players in the late 1990s: profits. In 1998, Sapient earned $9.4 million on sales of $165 million. Those numbers were upped to $30.3 million in profits and $277 million in sales in 1999. According to a November 2000 article in Computer Reseller News, "In an industry screaming with hype and larger-than-life personalities, Sapient co-CEO Jerry A. Greenberg stands out quietly." The article credits Greenberg and Moore for transforming "a nine-year-old consulting and integration company grounded in client/server computing into one of the foremost Web integrators on the scene."

By the end of 2000, the firm had 2,600 employees working in 18 offices around the world. However, despite the strength of Sapient's position, the North American economic slowdown, particularly in the e-commerce sector, did undercut Sapient's profits in the first quarter of 2001. As a result, Greenberg and Moore announced that the workforce would be reduced by 20 percent, the office in Sydney, Australia, closed, and U.S. operations consolidated.