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• Author: Reveron, Derek
• Position: Industria del internet - TT: Fast Lane. - TA: Internet industry

LATIN TRADE goes inside the world of frantic Internet startups.

TUESDAY

10:00 On the fifth floor of an old office building in downtown Fort Lauderdale, a security buzzer announces my entrance to a small, windowless suite of four offices. Secretary Clara Vélez, one of the company's five employees, types away on her computer, ignoring one BellSouth technician hunched behind her desk and another one vacuuming white plaster chips he tracked onto the gray carpet. The new phone lines are overdue. In the two months since Subasta rented the office, Doriot and Costa have handled most calls on their cell phones, leaving the phone lines flee for their computers' Internet connection.

10:15 Founder Craig Doriot arrives and immediately parks himself behind a surprisingly neat desk. He starts reviewing piles of legal work that must be finished soon to trademark the company's name across Latin America. Until the process is complete, the company risks losing one of its main assets. Books on computer science and advertising sit nearby, along with CDs by Natalie Merchant and Fiona Apple that Doriot sometimes plays on the community CD player. Large, half-full bottles of Tums and Excedrin sit in plain view and there's another stash of Excedrin in a cabinet behind his desk.

Conservatively clad in a dark-green long-sleeved shirt and white khakis, Doriot dresses more for his native Wisconsin than for South Florida. He is stocky and blue-eyed and sports short blonde hair. He doesn't speak Spanish and he has never visited Latin America. He came to South Florida seven years ago to earn a bachelor's degree in computer science from Florida Atlantic University, and, after graduating in 1996, he worked as an associate engineer for Siemens before co-rounding Yupi.com, a Spanish-language search engine.

Yupi has grown into one of the largest sites in the region, but Doriot left the company in 1997 for his new startup. Subasta is a shameless ripoff of the popular auction site eBay, right down to category names--but in Spanish. He fully expects that his site will be as successful as eBay and generate millions of dollars for him and his partners once they go public. That is the extent of his interest. "I enjoy the startup phase and building value quickly:' he says. "But at a certain point it becomes maintenance." Translation: He is an Internet gunslinger, looking to make a killing and move on.

So far, Subasta has no competition for the 34 million Internet users some predict Latin America will have by the end of next year. But that could change any day. He hears industry buzz that a major player such as eBay or Amazon.com might launch in Spanish, but Doriot is betting that the big guns will prefer to buy an existing site. After all, he says, growing by gobbling is the modus operandi of Internet blue-chips.

For now, though, Subasta is just another IPO wannabe making the money pitch. The company is chasing after about 25 venture capital groups, hoping to raise $1.5 million to begin advertising in Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela and Spain. Meanwhile, about 1,000 users have tried its online auctions. Subasta is also trying to build strategic alliances with portal sites to "brand" Subasta as the premier auction site in Latin America. Like many Internet entrepreneurs, Doriot and his partners believe that the first one to fill a niche is the only one that matters.

10:45 Doriot asks me to leave his office so he can focus on the trademark documents he must get to his lawyer. I wander across to Riccardo Costa's office. The pair met through Doriot's brother, and they are complete opposites. Doriot is laid-back...