by Adina Genn

Even the most self-assured entrepreneur might have thought twice about launching an Internet company during the dot-com bust. But Steven Morgan saw an opportunity.

Leaving a lucrative job as a vice president for the network management division of McAfee Software in 1999, Morgan started PeopleComm Inc. and spent nearly a year and a half preparing to launch his first Internet service, SalesRecruits.com, which offers online recruiting for technology sales reps.

"It was the perfect time. I thought, 'Who'd be as crazy as I am to launch a dot-com? The site went live January 2001, and we've had 400 customers since then," Morgan recalled from his third-floor brick-walled loft overlooking Northport's harbor. "Some of the most successful people in history built companies in down times."

PeopleComm clients include Dell Computer Corp., Apple Computer Inc. and Kronos, a human-resources company based outside of Boston. Right now Morgan runs two services, SalesRecruits and CardBrowser, a tool that enables vendors, employers and headhunters to find leads by perusing business cards online. Morgan's consultants gather those cards from exhibitors at IT trade shows around the world.

To Morgan, whose staff consists of 10 full-time employees and 45 part-time consultants, a company falls into one of two categories. "You can sell what you have and convince people to buy. Or you have what sells. We have what sells. We're lucky to be in that position."

Morgan tried his hand at entrepreneurship, he said, after he had his fill of working in what had become a large corporation. While at McAfee, the company grew from 100 employees to 3,000. In the beginning, the atmosphere was "entrepreneurial, exciting and small. Everyone knew each other."

But just before leaving McAfee, Morgan said he had 72 engineers and 80 salespeople working for him. "I didn't enjoy the administrative aspect of things. I'm more of an entrepreneur."

Morgan, 39, who was born in Manhattan and grew up in Queens, started in the IT industry a couple of years out of high school. He attended Control Data Institute in Garden City, a trade school for digital electronics.

From his first office in the Long Island Business and Technology Center in Great River, Morgan, along with two engineers, developed the blueprint for SalesRecruits.com. While competitors may have charged up to $20,000 for finding a $125,000-salaried staffer, SalesRecruits.com offered a $20,000 subscription, allowing clients to post any number of jobs and enjoy unrestricted access to the company's resume database. As a result, they could make dozens of hires for the same amount of money. Morgan provided smaller programs - one-month or three-month subscriptions, for example - to smaller companies.

Last year, the private company made a profit, racking up sales of more than $1 million, and Morgan projects that 2004 sales will range from $1.5 million to $2 million.

The company has been able to grow because there's not direct competition, Morgan said. "We're competing for budget from search firms, newspaper classifieds and the big boards," he said. "Nobody in the industry is doing exactly what we do."

Since starting the business, Morgan and his team haven't found any other company that targets the tech sales market. "Our large clients say we're the only ones doing what we're doing, which is why they've invested."

He spread the word about PeopleComm by issuing an online newsletter, which reaches 125,000 readers every month. "It's very effective," Morgan said. "It's the cornerstone of our marketing. We were featured in the Times, sales magazines, technical publications. We developed a following."

"He's very tied to the industry," said Shannon Levesque, senior recruiter at Kronos. "Some senior-level execs in my organization got his newsletter. I said, 'That's who he's targeting. That's the level of people I want to [reach].' "

David Korse, president of Framingham-based IDG World Expo Corp., recently signed a subscription to test the program's merits. "I was very taken by the CardBrowser feature," he said. "It could have value for us. It's a remote-control way of finding prospects."

Morgan, the father of five children and a former Catholic Youth Organization basketball coach - a six-year stint he had in East Northport - is now aiming to add new tools to his company's portfolio, including a CardBrowser product for the life-sciences and pharmaceutical markets. Both industries, he said, run enough trade shows to generate worthwhile leads to prospects.

And while in the beginning it was tough convincing large companies that PeopleComm was credible and had a valuable service to offer, the focus now is to win over small companies.

"Now we're starting to market ourselves to the smaller firms with 30 or 40 employees. We're actively hiring a sales team to go after the small firms across the country," Morgan said. "It's ironic. Our biggest challenge is getting sales candidates, and we're using our service."