It took a year in the dot-com trenches for Peter Gumbel, among the elite in business journalism, to pick up on something he might have observed sooner if he had stayed at the Wall Street Journal.

Gumbel, who quietly left his post as editor-in-chief and No. 2 at Business.com in April, said the lesson learned is now an old one: “It’s very hard to make content work on the Web as a business. It’s hard to be a viable business when you’re just providing content and relying on advertising. Somebody will figure it out, but they haven’t yet.”

Still, he has no regrets about joining the dot-com. “It was an incredibly wonderful year and an instructive experience,” he said. “I feel that what we built was really good and very useful. It was a lesson in the real world of business and one that will serve me well as a writer.”

Gumbel said he has been freelancing for the Wall Street Journal and other publications since he left the troubled Santa Monica-based business portal in April.

“I had a great year, but it was time to move on and return to journalism,” Gumbel said. “The initial promise of building a really big and important site didn’t pan out.”

“Peter Gumbel had accomplished what he set out to accomplish when he joined Business.com,” said Business.com Chief Executive Jake Winebaum. “He wanted to get back to what he really loves, which is writing. He accomplished a huge amount when he was here and we’re happy with what he did.”

The overall focus of Business.com will continue to be on becoming the leading business search and directory resource on the Internet, though Winebaum said its emphasis would change

“We invested time and resources into automating (newsgathering). We have less of an emphasis on having a newsroom,” he said. “The main difference between then and now is basically that we’re automating the news process.”

Another Wall Street Journal alum, Emory Thomas, has replaced Gumbel as head of news operations.

Thomas takes over an operation that has been cut from a peak of 135 employees to 90 as its ad-supported revenue model failed to generate enough cash. Most of the cuts came in the editorial and marketing staffs.

Like countless other journalists who jumped from print to the Web, Gumbel made the switch at a time when ad-supported content sites were enjoying explosive growth. Business.com, which was founded in November 1999 by Winebaum, a former Walt Disney Co. executive, made headlines for its aggressive moves, including hiring Gumbel and paying a record $7.5 million for its domain name.

After spending 16 years at the Journal, most recently as Los Angeles bureau chief, Gumbel ran the site’s editorial content, which includes a vast business directory and search engine.

Even as late as last August, Business.com received $61 million in financing from Financial Times Group, Cahners Business Information, Primedia Corp. and McGraw Hill Cos.

The company has about $35 million in cash left in its coffers, but Winebaum said there were new revenue streams, such as paid listings, to bolster that amount.

Death and Fitness

While B2C plays long have been eulogized, a few are just getting up and running in L.A.

FitnessHeaven.com, a Signal Hill-based health, fitness and wellness site, launched last December during the brutal Internet winter but has only in the last month begun marketing itself.

The site offers a wealth of information on everything from personal training to diet. Most of the content is free, but members paying a $49 annual fee get access to personalized information, interactive services and product discounts.

“If you offer enough information and breadth and depth, then people are willing to pay for it,” said Chief Executive Don Ressler, who owned and ran three car washes in L.A. before forming FitnessHeaven.

The site makes most of its money from memberships, not advertising, and Ressler said the company will be profitable by 2002. “That has put us in a power position as we seek our first round of funding,” he said.

The idea for the “A Grief Observed” Web site came when entrepreneur Darian Chin said he saw dead people.

While driving past a cemetery in 1999, Chin asked himself, “I wonder where we’re going to bury all the dead people when we run out of space?” That led the 1995 USC graduate to start AGriefObserved.com to provide information and other interactive tools for funeral professionals and consumers.

Chin, 27, and his staff of five, have received no outside funding and will seek none in the near future. “We’re trying to keep equity among ourselves,” he said. “We’re viable without funding.”

The company, which began meeting last June in a Westside Starbucks, garners revenue from advertising, paid listings and from research reports, such as the soon-to-be-released funeral industry compensation study.

While A Grief Observed vies with larger players like PlanForever.com, Funeral.net and Funerals.com, Chin said he is optimistic because there isn’t one company that dominates the online funeral market.

Tech Donnybrook

All hell broke loose last week at struggling Calabasas-based software company Netsol International Inc.

A group of investors led by New York hedge fund manager Jonathan Iseson seized control of Netsol’s executive offices with armed guards after claiming to have won a proxy fight for the unprofitable company.

The investor group claimed it was elected as the new board and that new executives had been named as managers.

The company is fighting back, claiming the previous management continues to run things and that the installment of the new board and management was not valid because a third party did not tally the votes.

Iseson’s Blue Water Partners invested heavily in Netsol in the late 1990s and the funds posted huge gains when Netsol shares soared to from single digits to the $80 range in early 1999. But when Barron’s magazine revealed that Blue Water was behind the increase, the stock plummeted, along with the value of Blue Water’s holdings.

Representatives of the two sides could not be reached for comment.

Netsol uses software developers in Pakistan to create its custom software, which end up mainly in financial applications.

Talent Auction

There’s hope for the thousands of recently laid off dot-com staffers who want to stay together as a team.

A group of South Carolina-based techies who lost their jobs at a company called Home Account Networks Inc. auctioned themselves off as a group for hire at online auction site eBay Inc. The group advertised itself on eBay for $1 million, which stirred interest from several online banking outfits.

They’re not alone. In response to growing interest, eBay recently added a professional services category to its site.

Staff reporter Hans Ibold can be reached by phone at (323) 549-5225 ext. 230 or at [email protected].