In the late 1990s, Ben Rooks was an equities analyst, spending much of his time flying around the country meeting with health-care and technology companies that could soon be going public. He still remembers running into the chief executive officer of drkoop.com Inc., an Internet-based consumer health-care network founded by former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop. To his surprise, he learned the company was planning an initial public offering. “I remember thinking, ‘You don’t really have a business. How can you be going public?’” said Mr. Rooks, who now is a principal at ST Advisors, a strategic-advisory-services firm he founded.
