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Founded by Daniel Aegerter.1
The company was founded by Daniel Aegerter as an Internet-based system for automating the purchase of computer peripherals for electronic publishing, which were distributed by his company, Dynabit.
At first, in 1996, Tradex offered a wholesale marketplace for computer equipment, with 40 vendors offering 15,000 products. In 1999, the company had 180 employees and 480 customers.
In 1996, it received an award from the Gartner Group and InformationWeek as the best Internet B2B e-commerce solution.
Revenues in 1998 were estimated to be less than $5 million.
By September 1999, the company had raised $28 million from investors including Internet Capital Group, Sigma Partners, Apex Investment Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, First Analysis Corporation, Imlay Investments, and United Parcel Service.
In 1999, it was negotiation a headquarters move to Atlanta. It also had offices in Boston, Dallas, Tampa, San Francisco, Washington D.C., London and Tokyo.
In December 1999, Ariba announced the acquisition of Tradex for stock then valued at $1.86 billion.
In January 2000, the company reached a reselling agreement with JD Edwards.
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On March 8, 2000, at the height of the dot com bubble, Ariba completed the acquisition. Ariba shares had tripled since the announcement of the acquisition 4 months earlier and Tradex was therefore valued at $5.6 billion, making Daniel Aegerter a billionaire on paper.
From Wikipedia’s article on Tradex Technologies, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3