The Young & Restless: Joe Cha and Jamie Lerner, Xuma

The word "Xuma" comes from an ancient Chinese battle cry. It means "charging horse," a fitting likeness for the Web services company that chose Xuma as its name. Of course, Xuma founders Joe Cha and Jamie Lerner weren't always ready for battle. They certainly weren't in 1998 when they started their company.

The company began as an e-commerce ASP. But thereafter, Xuma's dot-com clients began to fall away. Cha and Lerner, however, adapted and began building preintegrated e-business solutions based on platforms from Art Technology Group, BEA Systems and Microsoft. The company's latest product, CommerceX 2.0, offers solution providers a stack of software for documentation, payment processing and content-management technology. The company also provides hosting and managed services support.

"We spent about three years working on [the new products], and we created something pretty tremendous and unique," Lerner says. "Our core platform has been the culmination of years of work, even before I joined Xuma."

Cha and Lerner, both now 30, quickly figured the Internet would allow them to build something of their own instead of building something for a corporate bureaucracy. The two entrepreneurs met at Andersen Consulting. At the time, Cha worked in the company's Change Management Services division, while Lerner served as a senior consultant.

"When the Internet technology started coming out in 1994/95, there was this tremendous opportunity for young, bright people to do phenomenal things that there didn't seem to be when I first came out of college," Lerner says.

Cha says the company's winning formula is a blend of new and old schools of thought. "Managing as a young executive is tough, and you have to rely a lot on your instincts and the people around you as well," he says. "We compensate for lack of business experience with passion and energy."

Now that the Xuma team has deployed nearly 100 e-businesses, rolled out a new partner program, and received the backing of some strong investors, the company is living up to its namesake.

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