Valley of the Boom

I guess I was doing that little tease.

That little mark with the "a" and then the ring around it.

At.

See, that's what I said.

Katie said she thought it was about.

Yeah.

Oh.

But I've never heard it said.

Or around.

I've seen the mark but never heard it said.

What is Internet anyway?

Massive computer network.

What do you, write to it like mail?

Allison, can you explain what Internet is?

The Internet back in '94 was cans with a string.

Nobody knew what the web was, and there very, very incarnations of

something called browsers.

They still really have zero concept of what Netscape is.

They don't even know what the Internet is.

They don't even know the Internet is the Internet.

Most people had not really used the Internet, the vast majority of people hadn't

used the Internet before the Netscape Navigator was

introduced because you couldn't.

It was too damn hard.

"It's a web browser."

And I'm like, "What's, what's a web browser, dude?

Like, what is that?"

"This is the way that you can visually see everything that we already do on the net."

When the Netscape browser was invented,

it changed the whole experience of being online.

Let's open this sucker up, see what she can do!

Netscape made it possible to really explore incredible parts of the online

universe that we didn't even know existed before.

We want to bring people together.

Build a digital community through shared interests from people all over the globe.

An international social network of users who can connect solely

through their computers.

We want to change the world.

We wanna change the world.

I'm sure TheGlobe

founders would like a dollar for every time somebody asks them,

so you were like Facebook before there was Facebook?

In the beginning, we were talking about names like

TheGlobeand TheWorldand things that

implied a global community.

I remember having a flash in what cyber could be.

This is a new world.

This is day one of an entirely new world.

That you could create a location that people could go to and have an experience

in a virtual space.

Could you conceivably do this live?

Like a live TV broadcast.

Well, yeah, that's the idea, eventually.

This is it! This is what I've been seeing in my vision.

Hi. I'm Michael Fenne.

What Pixelon was claiming they could do, is deliver TV to your PC.

The entire engine that was driving the Pixelon train was Michael Fenne.

A golden tongue salesman, who had a vision.

Michael Fenne was an unlikely mastermind selling something that we

now take completely for granted.

Yeah!

I got a chance to meet Michael Fenne.

And almost immediately there just, something didn't seem right here.

The Internet felt more like the Wild West where you were going beyond the

frontier that people knew.

It was amazing, and you just watched this crazy circus take place.

.

Yeah, so Silicon Valley was originally known as the

Valley of the Heart's Delight.

And it was this incredibly beautiful place.

With orchards just as far as the eye could see.

People would talk about it in this sort of Edenic way.

It felt to people like paradise.

Silicon Valley was about San Jose and peach orchards being

turned into buildings for semiconductors and disk drives.

And some emerging thing called software.

From the '40s to the '80s, the orchards were being replaced by

one tech after another.

Apple, Atari, Genentech, Intel.

But nothing ever compared to what happened in the '90s,

when the Internet hit.

The Internet. The Internet.

The Internet. The Internet.

The Internet. The Internet.

On the Internet. The Internet.

The Netscape browser certainly played a big part

in opening up the Internet.

Molly, you feeling better, darling?

The ability to sell product on the network, to be entertained by the network,

the ability to communicate with other people.

All of those things were sort of unheard of before 1994.

The browser was definitely a neat and super-unique thing.

It-it was basically the best way to use the Net.

It made it possible to really explore.

Um, incredible parts of the online universe that we didn't even know existed before.

It should be so simple, but it's just not doing what I want.

When I hit return, the thing just crashes, every single time, no matter what I do.

Hm. Ok. Take a breath, Sean.

A breath?

I haven't taken a breath for like, eighteen months.

I'm used to being the smartest guy in the room and now I feel like I

shouldn't even be in the room.

Sean.

Have you ever tried to back in to one of these problems?

Marc Andreessen, the 23-year-old,

who helped create the Netscape software,

benefited from a leap of faith by investors.

And what was Mark Andreessen?

He was our Messiah of technology and the inventor of the browser.

You just reverse the paradigm.

Because you know the solution, correct?

Yeah, I do, the desired outcome.

Ok, then just work from there.

Backwards. Right?

Marc was basically visionary.

He saw way beyond the things that were being done at the moment.

He was just so bright.

You could tell that just by talking to the guy.

Wait. Really?

You'll need to wrap it in an extra div, then fire it up again.

It'll work.

How did you do that?

I didn't anything. I just gave you a prompt.

You did.

Remember: there are no stupid questions, only stupid people.

He's rather blunt.

I think the word would be arrogant.

And I don't think Marc ever suffered fools lightly.

Let's go stud.

Can't run this meeting without you.

Ah.

Almost forgot. Time flies.

All of us were quite aware that the number of downloads of the browser was

just skyrocketing, and we were starting to get actual revenue.

I thought this was an explosive thing.

I thought we were gonna continue to grow explosively, so I suggested,

"Why don't we try to go public?"

Barksdale and I were less certain and in fact, I was fairly adamant that...

Marc Andreessen.

What?

You're not Marc Andreesen.

Um. Yeah. I mean, yeah.

Hey everyone, I'm not really Marc Andreessen.

Um, you know, my name's John Karna.

I'm the actor who you've been watching playing Marc Andreessen,

but um, yeah, I'm not him .

The real Marc Andreessen would probably rather munch on a tasty snack of goat balls and

broken glass than reminisce about the good old days at Netscape; which is to say,

Marc is a very forward-looking individual,

he's not a "those were the best years of our lives" kinda guy.

But I'm an actor; so I will say pretty much anything.

Oh, and from here on out, you know what, I'm just gonna try to stick to things

Marc Andreessen actually said or things he would be likely enough to say

that he won't sue us.

Don't get me wrong, I'm nothing but smiles over here,

I'm just not 100% sold on going public.

My old advice had always been, a company had to show profitable results for three

years in a row before you could consider an IPO.

The main thing is, I'm hearing a lot of feelings and not a lot of facts.

Let's let go of the reigns here, let this sucker run.

Sales have doubled in a quarter.

Fact enough for you, Jim?

Company was barely a year old.

Unheard of.

It's just words, but as of yet,

we haven't hit several benchmarks for version 2.0.

I'm guessing that matters, yes?

Great.

So we launch the IPO, get a ton of capital to fund this thing and

2.0 makes 1.0 look like a stone and chisel.

It gives us room, guys.

And if Microsoft starts bundling their browser with their PCs?

That would take a huge bite out of our market share before

we're actually profitable.

A potentially fatal bite.

Okay, let me break it down for you in the simplest of terms.

This is Jim Clark.

He dumped three million dollars to start Netscape,

so he wants to take the company public,

have an initial public offering in order to make that money back

as fast as possible so he can buy himself a giant robot yacht.

This is Jim Barksdale, our CEO.

He's a very experienced businessman from the non-tech world,

who knows how IPOs work and what types of benchmarks you need to hit

before you go public.

Jim understands systems, possibly better than anyone else out there.

And he wanted to make sure the company was set up for long term growth.

And he also said at one point, "I made a promise to take care of these people."

And then there's me.

Marc Andreessen.

I just wanna get back to working on the product because at the end of the

day that's really all that matters, right?

Is that clear enough for you?

You're worried about facts?

About market share? How's this?

As we speak, 15 million people are using the Internet.

You know what that is?

It's roughly half the population of California.

There are 5 billion people on this planet.

We've only scratched the surface of buyers out there.