Organic started in Jonathan Nelson's San Francisco apartment in 1993, before most companies had a website or knew why they might need one. Nelson and his co-founders built sites and online campaigns for brands that wanted to look modern on the new web. One of them, Brian Behlendorf, was also a co-founder of the Apache web server project. When Organic went public in February 2000, at the peak of the dot-com boom, web agencies were some of the hottest stocks on Nasdaq.

Websites for Hire

Jonathan Nelson, Brian Behlendorf, Cliff Skolnick and Matthew Nelson founded Organic in 1993. They put designers, writers and engineers in one shop. Organic designed websites, built the software behind them and ran online ads for its clients. Omnicom, the advertising giant, became its first outside investor in 1997. The business grew as fast as big companies rushed to get online.

Forty Dollars, Then Pennies

Organic priced its IPO at $20 a share in February 2000, and the stock closed above $40 on its first day. Within weeks the dot-com crash began. Clients cut their web budgets. Within a year the shares traded for pennies. Seneca, a holding company set up by Omnicom, already owned most of Organic and bought out the rest at 33 cents a share in 2001.

Cover: Fruit Piece, Hannah Brown Skeele. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a still life of fruit (organic).