Chicken farmer's son turns 'hangover induced' idea into mega-million deal

By Aimee McClinchy

Friday 30th June 2000

BRAIN BEHIND BUSINESS: Grant Ryan

BIG IMPACT: The broker crows

In one of the most significant technology deals to come out of this country, US media giant NBC Internet is paying many millions of dollars for Christchurch search-engine company GlobalBrain.

The huge deal will make a multi-millionaire of its 29-year-old founder, Grant Ryan, the scientist son of a South Island chicken farmer.

The value of the deal, in which NBC's internet division lifted its 10% stake to become outright owner, is in the tens of millions of dollars.

It also means at least 80 new jobs for Christchurch as GlobalBrain looks to increase its 20-something team to 100 and stay put there.

What makes GlobalBrain's technology special is the way it ranks websites by popularity.

NBC has already spent $US30 million on an international advertising campaign boasting about GlobalBrain in the first quarter of this year.

The broker that put the two companies together, Double Impact, ran its own campaign: "how we helped a New Zealand chicken farmer make a killing."

Dr Ryan described the GlobalBrain technology as a "hangover-induced" idea thought up on an ordinary Sunday afternoon in early 1998.

He got his friends and family to trial the idea and put up funding before he quit his job as a scientist.

The key to selling the idea was "go hard and fast," Dr Ryan said.

He said Double Impact first agreed to see him because they were apparently so amused a chicken farmer's son had come from the bottom of the world and thought he could take the US on.

Dr Ryan told The National Business Review he could not comment on the deal as it was at a crucial point but NBC Internet corporate communications manager Lauren Lum confirmed they had acquired GlobalBrain in full in a deal that closed earlier this month.

Dr Ryan is expected to maintain the head role at GlobalBrain but revert to being an ideas man rather than a deal broker.

"I'm an engineer - all these ideas were driven by wanting to help and make things work," he earlier said. "The guys in the US [NBC Internet] have then driven us to keep going. I've got lots of other ideas."

Silicon Valley-based Double Impact chairman and chief executive Michael Gale said GlobalBrain appears as a nationally advertised brand.

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