like that at all.
I’d be the one to call up and apologize, and that was just part of the job.
Most people were very reasonable, and they would understand—things go
wrong. I would use the analogy of a cell phone (that was when cell phones were
really getting hot). I’d say, “Look, we’ve all got cell phones or car phones.
Sometimes they just screw up and they go wrong. And this is the same kind of
stuff; this is pretty advanced technology and sometimes things go wrong.”
But we did occasionally lose...

breed of cat in financial services. We were a technology company providing
great service to public companies. So we were always viewed as a technologist
kind of company, and many companies liked that. Some didn’t like that so
much. But that was our niche. That was our differentiation. We understood
technology better.
Livingston: Who did you learn from? Did you have any mentors?
Gruner: I had several. I tried to learn and listen to them. The whole founding
group at Data General were really smart people. There were four founders
there: Ed...

didn’t want to sell the company to somebody that was going to disembowel it.
So that’s why, when we had an offer from NASDAQ—and we had a couple
of offers from them; I can’t talk too specifically about it—we felt that it was the
right strategy. We’ve known the people for a long time; we’ve had marketing
relationships with them; they’re going into corporate services and they’re very
sincere about that. They want to use Shareholder.com as the foundation for
building their corporate services. They’re keeping the name. The valuation was
right. It...

$85 million of venture capital—they were going in and just bombing prices and
even giving stuff away for free.
We realized that we would have to adjust prices. So we sat down and talked
about it and, literally in a day, made the decision to completely restructure our
product line and roll that out pretty quickly. That’s the kind of thing that would
have been difficult to do in a more complex, let’s say, structure.
Livingston: You could be more flexible and move faster.
Gruner: Yes. So we were able to compete with...

lives.
Livingston: So you became a source of advice for these companies as well as a
source of new technology?
Gruner: Yes, I would say Shareholder.com played a significant role in the late
’90s and up until now, interpreting both the technology and the regulatory environment.
And from 1995 to 2000, the company and I personally spent a lot of
time going to trade conferences, luncheons that NIRI (National Investor
Relations Institute) would host, talking about “What’s the Internet?” and giving
demonstrations, trying to make that less intimidating, explaining it. And then,...