FreeMarkets (Pittsburgh, PA)

FreeMarkets pioneered online reverse auctions as a B2B tool for driving down suppliers costs at major industrial companies such as United Technologies and General Electric, forever changing corporate purchasing from a manual, relationship-based process to an automated online process. As the first successful B2B online marketplace, the company\u2019s IPO was the largest NASDAQ offering in 1999. It was subsequently acquired by Ariba.