Engin Sezici

That loud swooshing sound you heard was the opening price of Larry Ellison's unprofitable software-as-a-service play being jacked up from $13 to $26 a share - then moving up another $9.50 its first day out.

The venture, a Saleforce.com and Intuit rival, increased its coming-out price three times in the hours before its Google-reminiscent IPO-by-auction December 20.

First on Tuesday the number went from $13-$16 to $16-$19 and then on Wednesday to $19-$22 only to finally settle Wednesday night at $26 (after Oracle posted its latest glorious numbers), meaning NetSuite has raised almost $161.2 million and got itself a market cap of upwards of $1.5 billion - more than enough to pay Larry back the $8 million it owes him.

The auction was supposed to price the shares closer to their actual market value than a typical IPO, which usually prices shares at a discount.

Naturally, there are those who say the thing is overvalued. They've had practice saying that lately about VMware and VMware is in a lot better place than NetSuite.

Ah, but the glamour of the Ellison name.

At the opening, Larry's piece of NetSuite was worth $844 million. NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson is now worth upwards of $54 million and its CFO Evan Goldberg more than $117 million. Ellison put $100 million in the start-up.

NetSuite, which is $242 million in the hole after nine years in business - down $20.6 million the first nine months of the year on $76.8 million in revenues - is trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the chi-chi ticker symbol "N."

This Year AJAXWorld Is Sponsored by More Than 60 Leading Rich Web Technology Companies
AJAXWorld Conference & Expo this year was sponsored by the world's leading rich web technology providers including: 3Tera, Addison-Wesley, Adobe, Apress, Backbase, Bindows, Conference Guru, Cynergy Systems, Dynamic Toolbar, Extension Media, Farata Systems, Flash Goddess, FrogLogic, GoingToMeet.com, Google, Helmi Technologies, IBM, ICEsoft, ILOG, IT Mill, Ittoolbox, JackBe, JetBrains, Kaazing, Krugle, Laszlo Systems, Lightstreamer, Manning Publications, Methods & Tools, Microsoft, Nexaweb, OpenSpot, OpSource, Oracle, Parasoft, Passport Corporation, PushToTest, Quasar Technologies, Rearden Commerce, Servoy, SmartClient / Isomorphic Software, SnapLogic, Sun Microsystems, TechTracker Media, Tele Atlas, The Thomson Corporation, ThinWire, TIBCO Software, TileStack, Universal Mind, Vertex Logic, Web Spiders, and Webtide.