15 years: The short attention-span version

Founder Marc Colando graduates from University of Michigan. Moves to Atlanta. Starts Interactive Planet, Inc. (ipi.net) in 1995.

Develops interactive set-top box cable TV prototype for Scientific-Atlanta. Brings gaming, financial, and shopping services to the platform from (among others) Equifax, Fidelity, and the founder of Atari. Delivers a CD-ROM to help other agencies working with The Coca-Cola Company be more creative & effective. Kinda, sorta co-founder & employee #1, Loren Heyns, preaches all the while that this new thing called "the Internet" is already a big deal at his alma mater.

Turns out our interactive cable TV work looks a whole lot like this new Internet thing. Our team launches first transactional bank site on the Web for BankSouth. Takes our cable TV work for Equifax over to a Microsoft startup called MSN where Equifax is a launch partner on the network. NationsBank acquires BankSouth the day our BankSouth site goes live. We sell an independently-built Olympic site to NationsBank and gift the domain name Olympics.com that we own to the US Olympic Committee.

Team spends the next few years building dozens of sites for top-tier clients. Wins numerous awards. Produces major gaming CD-ROM recruiting tool for US Marine Corps. Awarded Gold Iwo Jima for work by Marine Commandant – booyah! Ranks #2 on the Atlanta list of Interactive Agencies. (iXL was bigger and went public to disastrous effect not too long afterward.)

NationsBank demand for ipi.net explodes. We build Web presence for more than 20 lines of business. Architects online banking for NationsBank with CheckFree back-end technologies.

Representative clients (by vertical)

Financial	Travel	Mobile	Consumer	Government
Bank of America	World Travel Partners	Vodafone	Coca-Cola	U.S. Marine Corps
State Street	Carlson Wagonlit	T-Mobile	Microsoft	FannieMae
MasterCard	American Express	Sprint-Nextel	AMD	State of GA
VirtualBank	Virgin Atlantic	Panasonic	EarthLink	ePipeline
Deutsche Bank	South African Airways		BMW (EMEA)	Irish Tourism Board

 

Founder Marc Colando is an Atlanta Small Business Person of the Year Top-5 Finalist. NationsBank and Bank of America merge. Bank of America Ventures invests US$8.3mm for a 10% stake in ipi.net. Fifteen or so people migrate from ipi.net into Bank of America as employees a few years later. Remaining team disperses to six new offices around the world. Marc learns an expensive lesson about having everyone sign employment contracts.

Atlanta shifts focus to developing interesting products. Founder takes hiatus to co-launch one of these ideas, incubated by a former ipi.net freelance designer in London.

Founder returns to ipi.net post-launch. Side product from 2005-7 is acquired. Relaunches new Web site. (You're on it.) Looks forward to hearing what you're up to and how we might be able to help.

 

A special note about our people & culture

The people at and around ipi.net have always been a tremendous asset. We've only made about 100 hires over our 15 years in business and there's no question that we've always been able to identify and attract hot strategic, technical and design talent. The following list is just a small sample of what some people who joined ipi.net early in their careers have go on to do since:

High-flying Alumni

• Chief Information Officer, Lydian Financial
• Tech Lead, Google Gears & Inventor, GreaseMonkey
• Vice President, Group Creative Director, Moxie Interactive
• Sr. Vice President, eComm Technology, Bank of America
• Owner, MF Buckhead, MF Sushibar and Nam Restuarants
• CEO and Managing Partner, Radius Online
• Associate Director of Art Management, Burning Man
• Senior Attorney, Microsoft Online Services and Advance Technologies
• Head of Online Project Office at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe