The Would-Be Man of Steel

SAN FRANCISCO -- Michael Levin, a steel-industry veteran seeking his dot-com riches, noted during his standing-room-only presentation to investors Monday that there probably wasn't anyone in the room who knew anything about the steel business. All this talk of mills, service centers, fabricators and Japanese trading companies probably won't interest you, he implied, but let's talk about the $700 billion global steel industry that e-Steel is going to revolutionize. Let me show you the money!

But hold on just one second. There was someone there who knows a little bit about steel. Me. I'm the equivalent of a steel-industry brat. When I was a boy, my family would drive by the steel mills in Northwest Indiana and we kids would hold our noses from the stink. "Do you know what that smell is?" asked my dad, who worked for no-longer-independent Inland Steel for almost 30 years. "Money" was the answer. I grew up and covered the U.S. industry's nearly final gasps for breath as a reporter in Chicago, whose last mill within the city limits (U.S. Steel's South Works) closed on my watch a decade ago.

You know where this is leading. This is one of those cornball tales about how the Net changes everything. Journalist leaves the Midwest to cover bits and bytes, silicon and software, and instead finds himself at a "technology" banking conference, BancBoston Robertson Stephens "Tech 2000," listening to a pitch about a steel company. ...