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June 23, 1999
Web posted at: 8:58 a.m. EDT (1258 GMT)

by Bernhard Warner

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(IDG) -- Legend has it that following the Tiananmen Square student uprisings of 1989, Ling Chai was smuggled out of China in a crate. Ever since, she says, she's been looking for another way to foment controversy and change. She's chosen the Internet. She has a startup called Jenzabar.com, which means "best and brightest" in Chinese.

Jenzabar.com, based in Cambridge, Mass., calls itself an education portal. Its mission is to build campuswide extranets, and ultimately link them up, wiring together schools and facilitating the exchange of ideas from Berkeley to Beijing. The service will be free to the first 50 universities that sign up.

Chai, still sounding the revolutionary, says the business is a logical step toward her primary cause: reform of China's political system. "In the past 10 years, I really have been searching for the most effective way to continue our [prodemocracy] goals and causes [from] back in '89. And so far, the Internet is the most effective way I see for opening China up," says the 32-year-old Chai, who recently Americanized her name, switching her first and last names. (In China, the family name, in this case "Chai," is considered most sacred and is used as the first name. In most news reports since Tiananmen Square she's been depicted as Chai Ling; Jenzabar press materials call her Ling Chai.)

Selling the idea to university administrators is tough, as is cracking the oversaturated portal market. But Jenzabar has an extra asset: celebrity. Chai is known the world over for defying tanks just to speak her mind. If the former surgeon general can generate buzz for a Net startup, why can't an attractive do-gooder with a revolutionary streak?

Ling Chai has some Western notions of running a business, thanks to spending part of the last 10 years as a student at Harvard Business School. Like many B-school grads with Internet hopes, Chai speaks of profits, potential mergers and acquisitions and an upcoming IPO – if, of course, her company isn't acquired along the way.

Jenzabar seems to be based on a sound, familiar set of Internet business principles. The company is giving away beta versions of its customizable portal; it will charge later. Seven colleges have signed on, including Western Dakota College and Boston College's Carroll School of Management. Students can download course curricula and event calendars. Eventually, e-mail will be added, permitting students, faculty and alumni to communicate on campus and beyond.

Revenue comes from advertising, sponsorships and e-commerce. Jenzabar doesn't sell products, but it intends to collect a bounty on each sale it generates for its advertisers. The more schools it signs up, the more leads. Chai characterizes it as a "shopping club," which aggregates names and links them with products.

Chai admits the portal concept is not new. She says she's in discussions with larger portals on a host of potential deals for content and capital. Her biggest bargaining chip now is access to college communities and Jenzabar's proprietary technology.

Angel investors include Reebok Chairman Paul Fireman and WebTV founder Steve Perlman. Enough capital has been raised to pull in a staff of nearly 30 and launch a PR campaign, but more money is needed to keep the company going. A first round of venture-capital financing is nearly closed. This is the first personal Internet investment for Reebok's Fireman, 55. (He has since backed another Harvard MBA's Net venture, called Incredible Art.) He is admittedly less than expert about the Internet, but says he likes the prospects for Jenzabar from both a financial and altruistic standpoint. He shares with Chai the hope of breaking down barriers to communication in countries such as China and Indonesia. And he thinks that universities are a solid target.

The company snagged another well-known name when Joe Malone, former Massachusetts state treasurer, left office in January to head up Jenzabar's marketing and communications department. Malone, 44, unsuccessfully ran for governor in 1998 on a platform of education reform; he says he turned down higher-paying job offers as a consultant and financial planner to help run Jenzabar. The financial payoff of riding a successful Net startup was an enticement, he admits, but the biggest plus is working with Chai, whom he met last year on the campaign trail. "You just have to be in her presence two minutes and you're convinced" Jenzabar's prospects are good, Malone says.

The managers understand the star quality they have in Chai. In early May, company PR reps began contacting the media, volunteering her comments on the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square uprising, intent on squeezing in a mention of Jenzabar. This approach seems to be working. In breaking down the media's interest in Jenzabar, Malone observes: "Frankly, it's about 60 percent Ling and her life story and 40 percent Jenzabar. But it's growing more [in favor] of Jenzabar every day."

Chai's Tiananmen Square role, for which she was nominated for a Nobel Prize, has been challenged in recent years. Her status as a revolutionary was first questioned in a 1996 documentary, Gate of Heavenly Peace, which portrayed her as a panicked, disorganized leader. Even worse, a recent article in the New Yorker characterized her as a sell-out, suggesting that she accomplished nothing in the riots other than individual notoriety, which she's now parlaying in the business world. But overall, she's been a media darling.

Even though Chai will still talk politics, she swears she is all business these days. "I'd like to be known as an Internet entrepreneur, as opposed to a political activist or even a business entrepreneur. Because, in a way, the Internet is a revolutionary business," she says.

"I really feel like I'm living the American dream," Chai says. "There's no other country in the world that would let me, a refugee from China, get the opportunity to learn and build a great enterprise for centuries to come."