Read My Links

By Molly Rath

Three thousand miles from Silicon Valley, in the northwest Philadelphia suburb of Conshohocken, the New Economy is humming along inside a relic of the Old Economy, a tire factory that's been converted into an office complex. At the rear of the building, behind a set of swinging glass doors, down a hallway, and up a short flight of stairs are the Spartan, white-walled headquarters of BeyondBooks.com, a purveyor of online middle school and high school curricula. There's no sign, no receptionist, no art on the wall, just a cluster of cubicles under a ceiling of exposed pipes painted white. Within these work stations, a couple dozen techies in T-shirts and jeans quietly tickle computer keyboards, taking the occasional kitchen break to dig into an oversized communal pretzel barrel.

BeyondBooks.com President and CEO James Cassano sits in a conference room furnished with a table and a few purple chairs. Sporting weekend wear—short sleeves and khakis—that's only slightly dressier than the grunge look of his employees, Cassano peers through metal-rimmed glasses at a computer screen. At 54, he has the round face, ruddy complexion, and ready smile of success. Not long ago, Cassano was a high-flying executive in the world of pinstripes and plush office suites. Armed with a gold-plated MBA from the Wharton Business School, he had climbed the corporate ladder to its top rungs, socking away plenty of cash for retirement along the way.

In 1998, however, Cassano hung up his suit and bet some of that money on the launch of BeyondBooks.com. The company, he believes, is selling what teachers want: customized curriculum that sorts through the World Wide Web's clutter, packages the best information, and pipes it into schools via the Internet. "We're developing a totally new mechanism so teachers can use the Web like never before and explore subjects to the level and depth they want to," Cassano says, now on the edge of his seat. "We're really trying to revolutionize the way education is...