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June 28, 1999 -- Business Week Online From Prime Time to Online
What do you do after you've turned an industrial powerhouse like Westinghouse Electric into an icon of old media, like
CBS? You move on to the Internet, of course.That's what Michael Jordan, who ran both those companies, is doing these days. Since leaving the Tiffany network in 1998, he has been investing in online
ventures.  Already, Jordan is anticipating the IPO of Clarant Worldwide, a
company he helped bankroll. It offers E-biz services to big companies. Now, he has been named chairman of a startup, eOriginal. Based in Baltimore, eOriginal plans to
profit from a patented process that verifies electronic contracts and other trade documents. Users create a document, sign it digitally using encryption, and then deposit it with a trusted third party, such
as a bank. The trustee has the key to decrypt the digital signature and can vouch for the signer, verifying the John Hancock in case of a later dispute. Jordan says eOriginal could help businesses
that clog lawyers' offices with complicated trails of paper documents: ''It can be a billion-dollar market capitalization company very quickly.'' With the
digital-document field wide open, analysts say, it could have a shot at that goal. Go to: Next article, Red Herring |
