BRAZIL.

BRAZIL IS THE WORLD'S SEVENTH-LARGEST Internet market according to the Computer Industry Almanac. In the first half of 1999, users increased by almost a third to more than 3 million.

Brazilians are flocking to the Internet since privatization has resulted in easier access to telephone lines and provider fees are now as low as US$11 a month. Moreover, foreign venture capitalists are searching for opportunities and advertising over the Internet has skyrocketed from just $13 million in 1997 to $100 million in 1999, according to Istoe magazine.

With that in mind, the big players arrived in 1999 to compete with Brazilian portals, including America Online, Microsoft, StarMedia Network, and Yahoo. Universo Online remains the largest service provider with 500,000 users followed by Zaz (owned by Spain's Telefonica) with 380,000 subscribers.

Despite the boom, there has been no mass exodus of brick-and-mortar executives to online companies. But headhunters say it is just a matter of time.

"The trend is just starting in Brazil," says Marcelo Mariaca, president and founder of Mariaca & Associates, one of Brazil's largest recruitment firms. "We don't yet see people leaving their jobs to go to web companies that pay 20% less than their current salaries but with the potential to make them rich. But it will happen. Brazil is fertile ground for the Internet."

The search is on and it is increasingly done The recruitment firm Group Cartho fills one out of four jobs via the company's web page. It currently has 11,000 resumes online and the number is growing by 10% a month, says company president Thomas Casey.

WWW.MLAB.COM.BR

Mom Goes Dot-com. Brazilian Beatriz Fortes had a steady job, a fabulously wealthy husband and a string of job offers that would have taken her to Europe, the United States and other Latin American nations.

She spent weekends at an Ipanema Beach country club and vacationed in Paris. She had a cook, a maid, a driver and a nanny. The only thing she lacked was a challenge--that is, until the Internet arrived.

"The trigger was (the challenge of) surviving in a market where people only give jobs to 25-year olds," says the 47-year old mother of three. "I wanted to become part of this new Internet world because I felt it would be something revolutionary. I had to prove myself."

And Fortes enjoys proving that she is up to any task.

In 1992, the garrulous Portuguese-language professor left the Catholic Pontifical University where she had taught for 17 years to "do something different." In the next five years, she worked for the Swiss-based Swatch watch company, headed an environmental organization, completed an MBA in marketing and represented the Brazilian Olympic Committee during Rio's unsuccessful quest to host the 2004 games.

Then, just as she was about to return to teaching, she bumped into a former student at an Internet conference who owned Mlab, a firm that creates websites for large companies. Firmly convinced the web would radically change the way people do business in Brazil, she joined her ex-student as his marketing director.

Since then, the company has designed Internet pages for Microsoft, Xerox and Sony Music and has become Brazil's biggest web production firm with US$4 million in revenues in 1998. And Fortes has moved on to become company director of human resources.

Most important, she has changed her life. She recently divorced her businessman husband and fired all of her domestic staff except for a "secretary, who does a little of everything." She also says paying bills and shopping on the web has given her so much free time that she gives Internet classes to bemused elderly businessmen.

WWW.BANCADIGITAL.COM

Online Newstand. Last summer, Omar Tabach saw a beggar on a Manhattan street holding a sign that read: "Spareadollar.com," While Tabach didn't have any change, he did a have an epiphany.

"Everything in New York is dot-com and when I saw the beggar with his sign I realized that Brazil is so far behind," says the 32-year old Sao Paulo native. "But I also realized that there are huge opportunities."

Six months later, Tabach formed www.bancadigital.com, a website that will allow cybernauts to subscribe to Brazilian magazines when it begins operations in 2000. "There are lots of portals, so I went looking for a niche market," he says.

Tabach expects to have 300 magazines online, including U.S. magazines after forging an alliance with a similar U.S. website. Most important, he expects bancadigital--banca is Portuguese for newsstand--to make money within a year without relying on advertising." I receive a very attractive commission on each subscription," he says.

Currently, Tabach is busy using contacts he made during a six-year stint as senior manager for the accounting firm, Ernst & Young, where he earned a six-figure salary and was well on his way to becoming a top manager. But Tabach, who has an MBA from the University of Sao Paulo, always dreamed of running his own business. So when four friends asked him to help create an Internet start-up company, he jumped at the chance.

"I had just married, moved into a new house and decided it was time for a complete change," he recalls. "I didn't even care what (website) idea they had."

And as it turned out, they hadn't decided.

For the next few months, the friends investigated the market before opting for the online newsstand. To date, Tabach is the only employee with a regular salary since he oversees the venture, which is financed by the partners' US$200,000 seed money. "Even if I lose money, it won't be hard to find another executive position," he says. "Having true experience in e-commerce is something everybody wants."