About Atlantic Media Corporation and Its Founder: A Quick History The day after college graduation was a busy day for Adam Grossman, a 1993 graduate of Williams College. He was becoming an entrepreneur, founding Atlantic Media Corporation (www.facebook.com), the creator of AboutFace. AboutFace is the computerized company-wide directory that maintains names, photographs, biographies, and floor plan locations for every employee in a company. AboutFace is accessible via a LAN or intranet from any computer within the company. The idea behind AboutFace evolved while Grossman was still in college. He developed, printed and sold a facebook his freshman year that included students photographs, home addresses, and birthdays. By using information already available in the Williams College database, he eliminated hours of typesetting and reduced production costs. "By my senior year, it only took me about a day to put it together," Grossman said. "All I had to do was download the information from the colleges computer onto my computer. No data entry and no typesetting. But I still did have to cut out and paste up 1,500 little photos by hand." During his senior year Grossman researched the feasibility of starting a company to produce corporate facebooks that would take the technology to the next level, eliminating the cut-and-paste step. While facebooks had always been common in the academic world, the idea of a facebook for a company was relatively new. Nonetheless, companies that he spoke to were interested in the product and recognized the benefit of employees knowing each other better. "A lot of people dont know what all of their co-workers look like and can enter a large company at a disadvantage. If people know each other better, they can work together better. People who see each other all the time really ought to stop calling each other hey, buddy," Grossman said. "I was also attracted to the idea of being my own boss. Being a senior in college, after all, I was a little scared of having to punch a clock every morning after I graduated." Grossmans entrepreneurial spirit has paid off. Today Atlantic Media counts among its clients half of Bostons largest law firms, including Goodwin, Procter & Hoar; Choate, Hall & Stewart; and Brown, Rudnick, Freed & Gesmer, as well several other law firms around the country and institutions such as Harvard College and Northeastern University. "Think of how much anxiety it would eliminate on the first day of a new job if you knew, or had easy access to, everyones name and face," Grossman said. "My goal is to have AboutFace running on desktops in every large organization across the country. It should be standard issue on your first day of work. You get pens, paper, business cards and access to AboutFace." (c) 1997-1998 Atlantic Media Corporation. AboutFace is a registered trademark of Atlantic Media Corporation.