Oliver is the prototypical entrepreneur, having co-founded Epicentric with Ed Anuff, little over two years ago. Today, with the help of President and CEO Michael Crosno and a seasoned management team, the company has grown to over 250 employees, with 10 offices worldwide, and spawned an entirely new category of enterprise software.

Oliver Muoto is truly a renaissance man. His skills range from fluency in Polish (he was born in Poland), to Java hacking, to graphic artist (a little known fact is that he designed from scratch the Epicentric logo still in use today). After graduating from the University of Southern California, Oliver gravitated to Silicon Valley and experienced a string of startup successes ranging from Random Noise (acquired by Vignette) to Touchwave (acquired by Ericsson). With these great accomplishments, he still managed to forfeit the opportunity of a repeat showing as Women.com's 'Most Eligible Man of the Internet 2000' by getting engaged in December.

It was in 1997 that Oliver and Epicentric co-founder Ed Anuff that they envisioned a great emerging market in unifying content and applications through a single platform that Epicentric was formed. In early 1998, the two entrepreneurs pitched iMinds and raised a small seed round. In less than three years, the company has brought on over 150 blue chip customers including Autodesk, BankOne, Chase, GE, Lockheed Martin, Nike, Wells Fargo, HP, Nortel and the USPS and now employs over 250 people.

For those not familiar with Epicentric, the company provides software platform for delivering and integrating web services. This e-business platform delivers next generation portal networks to businesses across intranets, extranets and the Internet. Its universal applicability and critical importance have raised a few eyebrows in the industry.

We'll look for big news to come in 2001 with both Oliver and Epicentric.

Oliver Muoto can be reached at oliver@epicentric.com.