Commerce One

Commerce One, Inc. was a B2B e-commerce company[2] that used online auctions to connect business to their suppliers.[3] At the peak of the dot-com bubble, the company had a market capitalization of $21.5 billion.[4][5]

Commerce One, Inc.

Fate	Acquired by Perfect Commerce
Founded	1994
Founder	Tom Gonzales Tom Gonzales Jr.
Defunct	February 7, 2006
Headquarters	Pleasanton, California
Revenue	$0.401 billion (2000)
Net income	-$0.344 billion (2000)
Total assets	$3.070 billion (2000)
Total equity	$2.799 billion (2000)
Number of employees	3,766 (2000)
Footnotes / references [1]

The company's technologies included Schema for Object-Oriented XML (SOX), an XML schema technology that influenced the development of the W3C's XML Schema language and the Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB).

History

The company was founded in 1994 as DistriVision by Tom Gonzales and his son, Tom Gonzales Jr.[6] It was renamed Commerce One in 1997 after Mark Hoffman became CEO.[5][1]

In January 1999, the company acquired Veo Systems from Asim Abdullah for $300 million.[7]

In November 1999, the company acquired CommerceBid from Ramesh Balwani for $4.5 million in cash and 785,000 shares and the company partnered with General Motors to create an online marketplace.[8]

In July 1999, on its first trading day after its initial public offering, the company's stock price rose 190%.[9]

In September 2000, the company acquired AppNet for $1.6 billion in stock.[10][1]

In December 2000, the company formed Covisint with Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Daimler AG, Renault, and Nissan. Ford and General Motors each received 14.4 million shares of Commerce One and Commerce One owned 2% of Covisint.[1]

In 2001, co-founder Tom Gonzales Jr. died of a rare cancer at age 35 and left his stake in the company in a trust to help the needy. His father was later accused of mismanaging trust funds.[6]

In October 2002, the company announced that it planned to lay off 400 employees, 36% of its staff.[11]

The company filed bankruptcy on October 6, 2004 and emerged from bankruptcy two months later.[4][12]

In December 2004, a portion of its patent portfolio was sold by a bankruptcy court to JGR Acquisitions, a subsidiary of Novell, for $15.5 million.[12][13] The remaining business interests, including all remaining intellectual property rights to the software, together with a patent license from JGR, were sold to new investors that continued to operate the company as Commerce One.

Perfect Commerce acquired Commerce One on February 7, 2006.[14]

Proactis acquired Perfect Commerce on July 7, 2017.[15]

References

1. "Commerce One, Inc. 2000 Form 10-K Annual Report". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
2. "Commerce One soars after 3-for-1 split". CNET.
3. John Carreyrou (21 May 2018). Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-5247-3166-3.
4. "Commerce One rises from dot-ashes". American City Business Journals. March 6, 2005.
5. Hamm, Steve (February 3, 2003). "Online Extra: From Hot to Scorched at Commerce One". Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
6. SIMERMAN, JOHN (July 13, 2007). "Charity sues over legacy of dot-com". East Bay Times.
7. "Commerce One Buys Veo Systems". QuinStreet. January 19, 1999.
8. "COMMERCE ONE BUYS COMMERCEBID FOR STOCK AND CASH". The New York Times. Bloomberg News. November 6, 1999.
9. "IPO a smash? Ask Jeeves". CNN. July 1, 1999.
10. "Commerce One, AppNet tie". CNN. June 20, 2000.
11. Gilbert, Alorie (October 4, 2002). "Commerce One cuts deep". CNET.
12. Meland, Marius (May 3, 2005). "Mystery Solved: Novell Behind Acquisition Of Commerce One Patents". Law360.
13. Meland, Marius (December 7, 2004). "Mysterious Bidder Snaps Up Commerce One Patents For $15.5M". Law360.
14. "Perfect Commerce Acquires Commerce One" (Press release). February 7, 2006.
15. "Perfect Commerce acquired by Proactis". Crunchbase.