EARLY HISTORY
Fulfilling a lifelong dream of owning his own firm, Chandrasekhar formed network software design and development firm Fouress Inc. in 1992. Within two years, Fouress had become a profitable $1 million firm. Eyeing the growth potential of the Internet, Chandrasekhar teamed up with Jagadeesh to form Exodus, an Internet Service Provider (ISP). The firm began operations in 1994 with 15 employees. The following year, the Fouress business was merged into Exodus, and revenues reached $1.4 million.
By 1996, revenues had climbed to $3.1 million. That year, Exodus shifted its focus from operating as an ISP to offering IDC services. According to Exodus Marketing Vice President Mark Bonham in the 1997 issue of The Business Journal, the firm changed its focus because "customers began wanting their Internet equipment in a service center rather than in-house. If you are a company with a significant amount of business on the Internet, you don't want to rely on the skills of one or two in-house people to keep your network going." Also, demand had increased for IDC services—such as providing servers to run Internet-based businesses with network connections to those servers. Exodus opened its first IDC in Santa Clara, California, and soon followed with another in Jersey City, New Jersey.
To expand further, Exodus raised $10 million in capital in 1996 and secured additional financing in 1997 to open future IDCs in Washington, DC; Chicago, Illinois; Los Angeles, California; Seattle, Washington; Japan; and the United Kingdom. During 1997, the company's Santa Clara facility served Web-based customers including Blizzard Entertainment, Hotmail Corp., Inktomi Corp., I/PRO, Sierra On-Line, and Tibco Inc. Revenues for the year continued to climb, reaching $12.4 million.
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