DIGITAL MASS.

Executives rush to join Internet companies for wealth, independence and a chance to change the world.

"THERE ARE VERY FEW CHANCES IN A UFETIME TO WORK ON a project that will affect people's lives directly and have the same impact as the Industrial Revolution," explains Mariano Dima about why he made the jump from PepsiCo to Internet company StarMedia a year ago.

While it may sound like Dima is dreaming, his words echo throughout corporate Latin America today where more and more people are dropping out of the rat race to join the dot-com crowd. As the following LATIN TRADE survey of "netpreneurs" shows, young and old, male and female, these early adapters love the freedom while seeking the gold nuggets strewn on the information superhighway and a chance to change the world.

Don't bother pointing out that the number of Internet users in Latin America is small, total online purchases are smaller and profits are nonexistent. All of the converts firmly believe that the digital mass of popular support for the Internet in Latin America, including average consumers purchasing online, is imminent. I believe, I believe. Eduardo Adame Goddard, a 53-year-old Mexican entrepreneur who runs Mexico's largest software company for online stores, says, "It's like a new religion--at first people are doubters but once you convince them they become fervent believers."

Do it now before it's too late is the credo for this movement.

Look at Fernando Espuelas, Latin America's Internet icon. The former mid-Level grunt at AT&T is 33 years old and head of StarMedia--an online venture that lost US$46 million on sales of $5 million in 1998, but paid him more than $350,000 plus stock options worth almost $25 million at the time.

No surprise then, when the web came calling in June 1999, that Mariano Varela bolted a 12-year career at ad agency Leo Burnett in Buenos Aires to become marketing director for portal El Sitio International. "Leo Burnett had been in the market for 65 years and believed it had my future all mapped out," says the 32-year-old executive. "El Sitio gives me the chance to create history, to be part of the birth of the Internet in Latin America."

Since the move, Varela has little regrets, and, instead, is thriving on the "adrenaline" rush that he says comes with working for a fast-growing web company. In fact, he says the speed of change has been dizzying since he joined El Sitio. During his first five months on the job, the workforce jumped from 120 employees to 300.

Freedom, sister. Yaz Colon isn't looking back either. She was head of Mondi of America, an international women's fashion firm, before jumping ship in April 1999 to co-found Espanol.com, a Miami-based Internet company that sells everything from books to perfume. "When I became president [of Mondi] I decided that my next step would be to form my own company," says the 41-year-old executive. "Then came Espanol.com, and I thought this is my shot."

Ditto for Eduardo Adame Goddard in Mexico City. Busy consulting financial institutions and corporations on how to set up electronic banking programs to improve payment systems, Adame realized that he, too, could build his own business. "My experience with electronic banking convinced me e-commerce could be done [in Mexico]," he says about how he and his three brothers came to found Tecnofin, a company that creates software for online stores, in the mid-1990s.

At the start, Adame and his partners didn't give themselves a salary. Instead, they continued to earn a living by consulting firms interested in electronic banking. But after investments of $2 million into the venture, Tecnofin is showing signs of becoming a lucrative business.

Tecnofin's workforce has grown from four to 30 and the company has built or developed 52 virtual stores that sell items ranging from home furnishings and handicrafts to Swatch watches and Philips electronics. There are only an estimated 60-70 e-commerce websites in Mexico, and Adame is convinced the big boom is just around the corner He says,

While Adame thinks the e-market is finally ready for him, Brazilian Marco Sarti believes exactly the opposite. Sarti, 36, is a filmmaker who moved in 1997 to the southern city of Florianopolis to become editor-in-chief of a website called www.matrix.com.br, now one of Brazil's biggest sites. Having heard so much about Internet technology, he enthusiastically accepted a job to edit news, sports and entertainment features for the website.

"This is the year of the birth of e-commerce in Mexico."

But from the very beginning, Sarti felt uneasy about the new medium. He was not a programmer and did not understand Internet lingo. He felt awkward working with more technically minded employees.

Frustrated dreams. "I had done CD-ROM projects but I wasn't proficient on the technical side of things. I didn't know html," he recalls. "The language is complicated and if you don't know it, it can be difficult. I had to rely on others,"

Moreover, he became frustrated when sending images over the web. "To do what I wanted to do was impossible," says Sarti. "It was just too slow, and not commercially viable. It was simply too soon to do what I wanted to do."

Sarti longed to return to television, which, he points out, unlike the Internet, has an almost unlimited range of colors and sounds that accompany transmission. In 1999, he finally quit to return to Sao Paulo to work as a freelance producer and video filmmaker.

Despite the negative experience, Sarti has not lost faith in the Internet. In fact, he says he will return once technology improves. "When television can be transmitted quickly over the Internet, there will be a need for technical people like me," he says. "When it is commercially viable, I'll return."

Many Brazilians taking the plunge now are in advertising, sales and marketing, with little or no Internet experience, says Evandro Audi, a sales executive who recently left a sales job with Veja newsmagazine to become sales manager for a web company called Real Media.

"If you look at the people being hired [by Internet firms] they are businessmen and not techies," says Audi. "Since everyone is going to be online, it's more important now to understand business than to know a lot about technology." Spoken like a true Internet visionary.