I was doing another job at the University of Kansas computer center that was essentially PC support. It came out of a project to do a campuswide information system. LOU MONTULLI: I started working on software for the web back in the early '90s. Montulli is destined to become one of Netscape's first engineers. Software to make web surfing easy is only now being written in computer labs by students like Lou Montulli at the University of Kansas. The World Wide Web is a nascent system of onscreen pages that are viewable-if you know a lot of tech mumbo jumbo-on the Internet. The Internet is a hodgepodge of mostly government and academic networks. So let's step back in time to the early 1990s. Iconic and brilliant, yet deeply confused as a business, the company rocketed from birth to huge acclaim to oblivion in fewer than five years. 18) memorably observes, Netscape brought the world Internet time, which whirls much faster than reality's clock. They reveal how Netscape founder Jim Clark initially was focused on anything but the Internet the unique blend of Gen X technologists and seasoned managers that became a template for so many of the dot-coms that followed and the surprise of the IPO itself-even Netscape's investment-banking firm, Morgan Stanley, didn't appreciate what it had wrought.Īs engineer John Giannandrea (employee No. In the following pages, we capture the voices of the IPO's primary players as well as those of people who had bit parts.

And Netscape's practice of openly sharing technology so that other programmers and their companies could build upon its ideas helped give rise to a global technology community, the open-source movement.Īll that happened just ten years ago. Executives with old- economy experience thought they could stake a claim to startup riches by quitting their jobs and following the example of Jim Barksdale, the former McCaw Communications chief who came in as Netscape's CEO. Its founders, Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark-a baby-faced 24-year-old programmer from the Midwest and a restless middle-aged tech pioneer who badly wanted to strike gold again-inspired a generation of entrepreneurs to try to become tech millionaires. More than any other company, it set the technological, social, and financial tone of the Internet age.

But Netscape mesmerized investors and captured America's imagination.

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