BY OLIVIA HSU DECKER
HauteART
Beyonce from the Africa Love category
WHEN I FIRST MET ERIC GREENBERG IN 1999, HE WAS 35 YEARS OLD AND WORTH OVER
Greenberg was born in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada in a poor neigh-
$1 billion as one of the most successful “dot.com” internet entrepreneurs. He was about to marry
borhood. His father was a salesman for Clairol and his mother worked as a cashier in a casino. He
his lovely fiancée Carmel. I sold him a home in Ross for which he paid $17 million to include all the
graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in finance and worked as a banker, a sales-
furnishings. Eric told the seller, “Take your windfall profit and go enjoy your life.” The sale set the
man for an internet company, and as an information consultant for Arthur Andersen. In early 1990s,
record for highest price in San Francisco and Marin County in 1999. The 7-bedroom, 8-and-a-half
he was a salesman at Gartner, offering technology consulting to companies. With his aggressive
bath estate on almost three acres land has a 12,500 square foot, Tuscan villa style main house, a
salesmanship, big ego, and intense personality, Eric was successful and making a half million dollar
limestone guest house, an Italian style pool, a gym, and a 3-car garage.
annual income in tech consulting. He was in his twenties.
Eric and Carmel had a fabulous wedding at Treasure Island in Las Vegas, Nevada. He hired Elton
In the fall of 1995, Eric was walking around a conference with Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang. He
John as the wedding singer. He then embarked upon construction of his home with a 31,000-bottle
saw a lot of executives who were curious about digitizing their businesses but didn’t have the know-
wine cave 60 feet underground and a state-of-the-art home theatre designed by Lucasfilm Sky-
how about the technology. “There are no IT folks there,” he said to himself. Eric wrote a business
walker Ranch theater professionals. He installed over 20 security cameras and audiovisual and
plan for a company he named Viant, and it instantly became one of the biggest and most successful
sound systems with 25-plus zones. He rebuilt an amazing garden with landscape designer Ron
web consulting firms in the 1990s. His client list included American Express, JP Morgan, Kinko’s,
Herman who was the landscape designer for Larry Ellison’s amazing Woodside estate. Ron cre-
and Radio Shack.
ated Greenberg’s Japanese hydrangea garden, English garden, organic vegetable garden, lavender garden, and rose garden.
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He then left to found Scient, essentially the same internet consulting company, with further success. Scient went public in May 1999, which made Eric Greenberg an internet billionaire in the mid-
PHOTO CREDITS: ©ERIC GREENBERG
ERIC GREENBERG’S JOURNEY FROM INTERNET BILLIONAIRE TO ARTIST OF LOVE
