Online benefit broker UltraLink says it can buck the dot-com downturn

Unrestrained excitement over the Internet’s potential to change healthcare spawned a string of companies with bubbly, frothy business models that since have burst.

But Jeff Graves, chief executive of Costa Mesa-based UltraLink Inc., is staking out a niche he hopes will transcend the dot-com phenomenon. He’s not looking to wire notoriously unwired doctors or bring reams of patient records to the Internet.

UltraLink, he says, is focusing on something businesses use,employee health and welfare benefits.

“This is not a sizzly, sexy business model,” Graves said. “It’s not a business model that is tough to figure out.”

The company is looking to make it easier for human resources managers to shop for healthcare, enroll workers and streamline administration. UltraLink employs some 300 people, including 150 in OC, and has about a dozen offices around the country, according to Graves. The company has gained some big-name clients, including IBM Corp., Time Warner Inc. and Kraft Foods Inc.

But UltraLink has felt the fallout from the dot-com shakeout. In July, UltraLink LLC merged with El Segundo-based iBenefits Inc. Prior to that, privately held iBenefits saw its valuation drop by $50 million to $100 million last year as Internet stocks continued to fall on Wall Street. Graves, a Marine who served in the Persian Gulf War and who hails from iBenefits, called it “a really black period in my life.”

Still, UltraLink landed $41 million in funding from New York-based Capital Z Partners and others in July. A month earlier, the company hired Richard Kish, a former technology executive with General Motors Corp., Ingram Micro Inc. and Barnes