I'm just not 100% sold on going public.
Even with Microsoft entering the arena,
the IPO gives us room to expand,
to stay ahead, not just keep up.
Till we need more money, I can make some calls.
We won't be able to keep it afloat
with a few grand here and there.
Netscape reached $5 million from a 30-minute meeting.
We need venture capitalists.
NASDAQ is pumping. Why don't we have a price?
$71 a share.
Another round of begging friends and family for money?
Did you guys see this yet?
If anybody needed proof that the Internet is real,
here you go.
We are the top browser in the business, so congratulations.
It also makes us a target.
I'm trying to get a round trip ticket to San Jose.
Actually make that one-way.
Hey there, are you uh new to town?
I sure am.
I'm actually looking for some office space.
When Netscape went public,
investors couldn't get enough of the stock.
Hi. I'm Michael Fenne.
The boom was a product of what we now call FOMO,
you know the fear of missing out.
Did we attract a lot more people
who thought they could make money?
So you had a very large number of people who didn't understand
what these products were, they wanted to take it on the train
even though they didn't know where the hell the train was going.
Everybody thought they could get rich with a website,
with a, new technology, with an advancement of the technology, you know,
and people who weren't making money felt like they were left out.
It was most definitely a gold rush.
The rush to become the next Yahoo
or the next Amazon.com is exactly
what made everybody look the other way, uh and allow Michael Fenne
to pull the wool over people's eyes.
I am doing Marcus Aurelius in the Easter drama here
and I have to wear a Roman legion battle toga.
It is so cool.
I was trying to take a picture and show you the new me,
but I am still afraid that names deleted may betray me
and take it to the officials.
I finally got my hair the way I intended.
It took five treatments with salon coloring, but it looks absolutely good.
Even if I could I would not go back to my original color,
because this looks so cool.
Almost blinding.
When I get my face done,
even name deleted may not recognize me when I see her this summer,
but she'll know me, I know she will.
I am getting brown now, very hot here,
and am, yes, supplementing with a tanning bed
for the Easter drama, since Romans were bronze.
What say you, Lucius Veras?
Marcus Aurelius, is it the truth you tell?
Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact.
Everything we see is a perspective, not truth.
But sir, do you or do you not dissemble?
Do you not see? It matters not.
Our life is what our thoughts make it.
Marcus Aurelius, I beseech you.
Defend the city of Rome and its citizens.
Senators, we must speak of war provisions.
The Silicon Valley money machine is still cranking.
They are buying the $4 million, the $3 million homes.
Welcome to the front lines of the technology revolution.
These kids are 25 to 35.
And they've all made it.
There was The Valley before Netscape.
And The Valley after Netscape.
Things were changing like this, gradual, gradual, and then boom!
Hockey stick, you were in a completely different place.
They were raising fund after fund after fund.
$400 million, $800 million
to invest in this new thing called the Internet.
Never had there been anything on the scale of what happened
when the Internet hit and the dot com showed up.
There was a proliferation of wealth
and there were different kinds of people moving here.
All the Harvard Business School started to come in
when they would never come to Silicon Valley before this.
It was much more of a scene.
It became a scene.
Once you came up with a, an idea.
Well, then it was just a question of getting people
to believe in that idea
and riches were possible.
Netscape really changed everything,
the beginning of what now has become much, much more common.
To have an engineer, a geek, become a rock star.
This is absolutely the number one seller.
And how much does this one go for?
They're approximately a quarter million dollars.
Wow.
February was a great month at Ferrari of Los Gatos.
The NASDAQ was soaring and its Silicon Valley customers
rushed to convert stock market riches:
into sinew, steel and fire engine red paint.
We sold 7 of these things in one Friday afternoon.
D'Anne was just a warm, nice jovial person.
So I think she made everyone feel at home and at ease
and she was a little like a den mother.
You always need someone like D'Anne.
I was Jim Clark's secretary.
When he started Netscape with Marc Andreessen, he said,
it's a risk with pretty much zero job security,
but I can offer you stock options, and I was in.
The boys called me "Netscape Mom."
And, y'know, it worked out.
I worked so hard to literally dress these guys and tie their ties but,
after the IPO, suddenly I was rich!
And overnight, "Netscape" was a name that everyone knew.
Hi, Marc.
Hi, D'Anne.
What changed in our culture or individually after the IPO,
not as much as you would think.
A lot of it was nose to the grindstone,
"We've got a mission and a vision to change the world."
I mean, some of us knew we'd made money, don't get me wrong.
We weren't stupid.
But we had a higher paradigm and vision of what we wanted to do.
Yeah baby, blow the top off!
It just keeps going up and you can see it happen!
Hey, guys, know how we feel about celebrations of success.
Let's just keep our eyes on the prize.
- Jim. - Yeah?
We already got the prize.
And our stock just went up another 12%.
I hear you, darling, I really do.
I just want to make sure we're all focused
on getting this company to the finish line
so we can all keep all this imaginary stock option money.
Because it ain't real till it's real.
- Fair, fair enough. - Alright.
And this is another Barksdale quote:
"The main thing is to always keep the main thing the main thing."
That's what Barksdale was trying to do when he said:
"Don't get too distracted about this IPO."
Oh, and D'Anne.
Some of these people weren't here before the IPO.
I just wanna make sure they're excited to be here and they all feel
like they're part of the team, so.
- Got it. - You get it.
Yeah. It went up again!
Good morning, Sunshine!
Okay, Jim, what do you want?
Why does it mean I want something
just cause I greet you in a friendly manner?
Do I need to repeat the question?
Okay, fine, I'll skip the niceties.
We're taking the Microsoft meeting.
- OK. - I want to see their cards.
I can tell you what's in their hand right now.
Lay it on me.
Gates will try to close us on some kind of strategic partnership.
And then basically lock us up in their tower like Rapunzel.
Or eliminate us entirely like a gnat.
Nah, we're too big.
- Really? - Well aren't we?
- Next to Microsoft? - Market share.
True. But I doubt Bill Gates sees it that way.
True. Great talk.
Always.
Really nice space. Really nice. I like it.
Thanks. Yeah, well, it works out.
Yeah. Well, I can definitely help you out,
bring your people into the 21st Century.
I know the complete Office Suite very well.
In fact, I'm friendly with the Microsoft team in Redmond,
it really is a small community of innovators.
Really? Well, that's very impressive.
I'm still kinda getting up to speed.
Thing is, I've got some pretty big things going on, so.
Big things?
Oh, the Internet is changing the game, Chuck.
But you know better than anyone,
anyone that doesn't get on board
is gonna miss out in some very meaningful ways.
Well, I'm hoping to get on board.
I'm in the process of not only changing the game,
but blowing the game to bits.
Revolutionary stuff, consulting some pretty big players.
That's exciting.
Lord help me. Saudis, you name it. Yeah.
Big money, big headache!
I guess.
Yeah. I can help you out during the day, okay,
and then I'll just get most of my business done later or at night.
Sound good?
Terrific. Uh, the way we work it around here
is you just give me a small deposit,
I'll cut you a good deal on the space in exchange for some lessons.
Or, how about this: let's just skip the deposit and lowered rate,
and I just cut you in on my repair gig,
slide over some of that Saudi money? 5%?
Oil money? Hell yeah, that could work!
- Alright. - Alright.
Jesus Christ, I am so tired.
Allow me.
That's okay, I'll get the next one!
Like it's that easy for a brother to get a cab around this mother...
Hi! Hi, hi. Hey there. Remember me? No?
Well, that's okay, most people don't remember the stockbrokers.
But me myself, yeah, I'm going be here for a while, so get used to me.
The name's at the bottom. Check it.
Name is not at the bottom. Uh.
Has anybody seen my chyron? Has anybody seen my chyron?
I apologize ma'am. You didn't deserve that.
There it is, oh! It's Darrin, here we go, just.
My name is Darrin. Sagittarius.
My turn-ons, well check it out, I like, let's see
long walks on the beach.
I like private jets.
Milton Friedman-style free market capitalism.
I mean, look at them.
Aren't they just adorable?
You know, it's easy to look at them now
and know they were on the right track,
at least that they were in the right zone.
I mean, these dudes basically invented Facebook.
And you can keep your pithy comment, Mark Zuckerberg;
you got a lot on your plate right now. Shh.
But what if we were talking not about "social networking,"
but I don't know, uh,
bitcoin or self-driving cars
or something that geeks are geeking about today,
would you just know that it was right then?
Gotcha, didn't I? Cue the taxi.
Cue the sheer disappointment on my face when I realize,
they ain't pickin' up brothers right now.
Hard to get a taxi around here, you know.
I should create an app for that.
That'll never work.
It's not much, but I'm gonna make it my home from this day forward,
and you know what I'm gonna do?
I'm gonna make J-Lo-sized buttloads of money
right here in this bland little strip mall called Silicon Valley.
That's what I'm gonna do.
Oh, wow, do you smell that?
That is the smell of billions and billions of dollars beginning
to pour into the Valley.
Oh, yeah.
Wall Street has finally got a new favorite child,
one that seemed to skip the coltish adolescence
with the headgear ant he face acne,
and turn into an overnight supermodel.
Oh.
Good luck, fellas!
I think within the first month,
there were always users in one of our chatrooms,
let's launch the second chatroom and then a third chatroom
and our user base went from
a few hundred users the first month to a few thousand second month,
to like 10, 15,000 the next month and it kept doubling up,
month over month.
The most frustrating thing for us,
was knowing not only were we on to something revolutionary,
but that we were exploding in growth
and couldn't get enough money to help us support it.
I don't know, man. I don't know anything anymore.
Well, Todd, we better figure out how we're gonna fake it.
We're broke. Again.
I feel like we go broke every two weeks.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
I mean, what the hell.
Bob Halperin is a really smart dude.
Raychem was huge.
But, he's used to putting his money into a product,
something he could hold in his hand.
This is not a tech guy,
certainly not a guy who's gonna respond to a web-based,
non-monetizing, non-product.
Netscape.
We're not selling Netscape.
But Netscape is selling us.
Okay, Obi-wan. Spit.
All we have to say is "Netscape."
That's all anybody's talking about in the Valley.
Nobody gives a crap about anything else.
And what is Netscape?
I dunno, rich?
Yes. And web-based.
I hear you, Steph, and yet all I hear when we go
to pitch this idea is a giant sucking sound.
All we need is somebody who's willing to roll the dice with us.
Before we go bankrupt.
- Hey, Todd. - Yeah?
Do we really have to sleep in your childhood bunk beds again?
They're free.
We were just getting better and better at recruiting.
We became the place if you were a serious high-end software engineer
to come and work.
We were killing it.
I will say,
I've never worked any place in my life as competitive as Microsoft,
like Microsoft liked competition.
Microsoft is gonna compete with us?
That's insane.
They're like, they're a mountain.
They focus on market share, like owning markets.
We saw, you know, Microsoft doing
probably everything they could come up with to erode
our market share and we just didn't play like that.
We didn't respect that.
Netscape was about trying to bring the Internet to people.
Microsoft was about market share, and they did it exceptionally well.
Gentlemen.
The browser war began as a news story.
I don't know who coined the term. We didn't coin it.
We're in a browser war, dude.
What's that?
You keep sittin' there, you're gonna find out.
OK, I get it. Cue yawn.
So here is what I am going to do for you,
I'm gonna liven things up a little bit,
you know, you get the juices goin',
I'm gonna bring in a couple of mob boys,
some freestylers that I know,
Checkmate and Concise, and they're gonna tell you exactly
what the Browser Wars were in a classic mid-90s style rap battle.
And for your listening pleasure, yours truly will provide the beat.
♪ Lemme tell y'all a story about a mighty company ♪
♪ Ruled the world of software up until '93 ♪
♪ Then Bill Gates wanted Netscape dead ♪
♪ So he called a fateful meeting this is what he said ♪
♪ Yo, before you keep on lyin' let me make a (bleep) point ♪
♪ That up until this moment Netscape ran the joint ♪
♪ The idea of the 'net flew over Bill Gates' head ♪
♪ Andreessen, Clark and Barksdale had the browser makin' bread ♪
♪ Netscape shows up with their brand of perspicacity ♪
♪ Blended oh so sweetly with unusual tenacity ♪
♪ While Gates and his crew show a paucity of gravity ♪
♪ and a (bleep) greed near-depravity ♪
♪ Right or wrong, 'cause it doesn't really matter ♪
♪ When Gates bring out the hammer, yo your kneecaps will shatter ♪
♪ Be that as it may this whole thing is a bust ♪
♪ 'Cause what Bill Gates did is called ANTI-TRUST! ♪
Oh my God!
Uh, I want to talk about this crazy meeting with Netscape.
We all remember our side of the story, let's just put it that way.
I didn't like Microsoft. At all.
I've been saying they're good guys and I respect them.
Off-camera I would say something.
Before we get too far down the road, I just want to be really clear
that Microsoft essentially owns the Internet.
If you wish to have a partnership with us,
then you'll need to get on board with the idea
that Netscape needs to cooperate,
become a partner who essentially builds on our core services.
So, either partner or compete.
And I think we all know how that will go.
How do you see that going?
Competing?
- Yeah. - Seriously?
- Yeah. - Against Microsoft?
We were the little guys.
We were one-one-thousandth the size of Microsoft or something.
They were coming after us, you know, pissed all of us off.
The kind of meeting that they talked about
is not the kind of meeting I was in
and certainly not the meeting
that my colleague actually remember happening.
We were in the room with Jim Barksdale
who is one of the legendary CEOs in the history
of American commerce.
You don't wanna, what's the ol' saying, spit on Superman's cape,
or something like that?
So, the accounting that we heard
about that meeting of us going down there
and making these threats to them has always cracked us up.
We found out later that they had already
retained this anti-trust counsel,
that they had been trained on what kind of things to probe with us.
They were on a mission to get some documentation, uh, to be able
to file anti-trust claims against us.
This was a 2-hour lunch meeting.
My colleague and I, like, none of us were eating,
and uh, in the middle of the meeting
a pizza shows up to the conference room that we're in.
And it's not a pizza for us, it's a pizza for Marc.
Okay, we're all sittin' around the table, hungry and Marc just opens up the box
and starts eating in the middle of this meeting.
It was clear Marc was not taking us seriously as peers
or as an interested party.
He was sort of looking at it as like a lark to meet with us.
I think it was deliberate, like I think
he's an incredibly calculating person,
and incredibly socially cunning.
He's an elite thinker.
You know what?
Sometimes a pizza is just a pizza.
At one point in the meeting, they said, well, how about we do this?
We'll take all the browser business that runs on Microsoft software
and you all take the rest.
And I said, well that's pretty slim margin there, buddy.
The primary desktop OS was Windows,
so they controlled the platform that had the majority of our users.
That's really when Microsoft officially declared
their efforts against us.
Did that really just happen?
Did they just threaten us?
I wrote it all down, because I knew
it would be too surreal to fathom.
But I didn't expect it to go quite like that.
They want us to what?
Take a little corner of the Internet and disappear?
Yeah. Essentially.
Maybe this is a good thing.
In what way?
Maybe they just broke the law.
Damn these are good.
Looking good!
Michael Fenne?
Huh?
Hi, I'm Robert Dunning, nice to meet you. I'm a designer.
Mhm.
A friend of mine from the church
said you might be a good person to talk to.
Well, that depends on what we're talking about, ha!
He said you might be interested
in investing in or developing new Internet and computer technology.
Well, I have a pretty broad grasp of various technologies. So.
Yeah.
Um, my pal Steve is a horse-racing fanatic
and he asked me if I thought there was any way that using, y'know,
current technology that I could play him
some sort of feed from the track so that,
- y'know when they parade the horses around? - Yeah.
He's a real big believer in that that sort of thing is a big indicator
of like, how the horse is gonna do in the race.
- Yeah. - Anyway,
because there wasn't quite that kind of thing,
I began fooling around and... Can I show you this?
Sure.
OK, there.
Just a moment. Let's see here. There we go.
I do have a 3 p.m.
Yeah, just be one second. OK.
OK. OK.
Just loading.
Great. OK, so this is a really rough beta version. Right, yeah. Log in.
Wait. What am I seeing there?
That's a download of the video feed.
- That is impressive. - Yeah.
That's a really good picture.
Cool, huh? I mean, I still have a lot more to figure out
because it's not even a thing yet, but uh.
Wait, so. Could you conceivably do this live?
Like a live TV broadcast?
Well, yeah, that's the idea, eventually.
Or at least nearly live, if not simultaneous.
In order to stream live video,
you had to show it as a little post-it stamp size.
You'd be watching literally, it'd be like that.
It was tiny.
But if you were able to do full-screen almost TV quality video,
for a standard dial-up modem, that would've been somethin'!
Yes, Robert, I think you may have the very beginnings
of something quite promising.
Alright, hey, look at it.
See that? See it?
Yee shall be as of the light of the mornin', when the sun rises.
Yes! Look. I might be able to help you.
Really?
Yeah. I've been working a little in this arena myself.
In what capacity?
I'm a big picture kinda guy.
I mean, I understand most of the nuts-and-bolts, but frankly,
I get a little bored with 'em after a while.
I hear you. It sure can be a grind.
But I may be able to provide some seed money and my staff,
if you're interested in a creative partnership.
Wow.
Look at that.
Because I look at you and I see something, something I recognize,
a hunger or a desire to prove yourself.
Haha. You got me.
We have a wide range of competitors entering the space
competing with just one part of what we do.
The Microsoft browser is basically what we did with Mosaic.
And I'm glad to see they've caught up to what we did two years ago.
That's good PR.
Marc's cockiness was never
something I particularly felt good about.
And I think that article is one of those that just felt to me like
waving a red flag in front of a bull.
So you don't see them as a threat?
"The Evil Empire?"
I don't see it as a matter of good or evil.
Microsoft is a competitor, and a smart one.
And Jim and I just think it's important to point out
what Microsoft is doing in various areas,
since they are very good at using FUD to attempt to paralyze the market.
FUD?
Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.
Marc's comments were never planned.
That's stuff again I wish I could've controlled better.
It wasn't a nice comment.
And it irritated him.
I don't think it was all that bad.
Don't tease your competitor,
particularly one as big and well-financed as Microsoft.
We were a very proud culture
and we were a very aggressive culture
and they were, uh, you know, rattling the cage as it were.
Marc started to get a lot more strident and aggressive
and ad-hominum in his attacks,
that it wasn't like we were wounded by them,
we were sort of just like, whoa, OK,
you know, batter up, let's go, uh...
I will say we went a bit further than Marc did.
We actually printed his quotes and put them on the wall
inside of the building to make sure that everybody
walking in the door knew what Marc was saying about us.
They were gonna come after us anyway, they started in 1994,
the battle was on, the war was gonna happen no matter what
and we had to have bring some levity to the situation.
Without that you just feel crushed.
They took it too serious.
Here's the deal; the Internet is here to stay.
And that's a good thing?
Oh my dear friend, yes, that is a good thing.
Y'all ever hear of Netscape?
I've heard of it, but I have no idea what it does.
Exactly!
I would argue that even Netscape doesn't quite know what it does,
so don't feel too badly about it.
What is your name again?
Sheila.
Don't feel too badly about it, Sheila.
They haven't come close to making a profit.
They're valued today at over $3 billion.
Hah!
And, in my less-than-humble opinion,
what I'm doing down here in your little city is gonna blow the tops
right off of the Netscapes and AOLs of the world.
San Juan Capistrano, it's kinda the perfect place,
for him it's god an affluent population.
Many of them had, you know, a spare $150,000 to invest
and he starts to convince them that he's got some really good ideas,
that he could make a lot of money from
and you know, people who invest in him could make a lot of money too.
What exactly are you doing in our little city?
Well, I could tell ya, Larry.
But then I'd have to kill you!
No.
But seriously, it's like the Wild West,
and I just laid claim to a serious gold mine.
So? You gonna let us get a piece?
There may be a limited number
of openings for discerning investors.
But this is cutting edge stuff.
Very hard to explain in a prospectus.
It's a leap of faith.
You know that saying in the Bible, "Oh ye of little faith?"
I mean, I know it, but I don't know it know it.
When Jesus did his walking on the water thing,
y'all remember that, don't ya?
Matthew 14:28?
So Jesus he's walking on the water, and Peter's right there by his side
and then Peter says, "Lord, if it is you,
command me to come unto You on the water."
And Jesus said to Peter, he said, "Come."
And lo and behold, when Peter turned his attention to Jesus,
he walks on the water!
Just like the Lord!
And he's like, "Oh my God! What the...?"
And the second he thinks about it, he falls in the water.
And Jesus says, "Peter, Oh ye of little faith, why do you doubt?"
It isn't that Peter didn't believe, that
it's he didn't have the duration of faith.
He was trying to hold onto two things at once.
This is, and this can't be.
And the weight of that sunk him.
I've been Peter before, but right now I'm on this incredible ride,
where I know that this "World Wide Web" stuff
is exactly where the Lord wants me to be,
and where I am going to be successful beyond my wildest dreams.
One thought, one faith.
Yes is yes.
Well, I don't want to bring "filthy lucre" into the mix,
but I would love to be part of your endeavor, Michael.
Me too.
To the Internet.
San Jan is close enough to Los Angeles
that they could get executives
and artists, actors, musicians, other types of people,
they could cut deals with.
It was far enough away that it seemed
to escape a lot of careful scrutiny.
At the time, you had this kind of jerky type of video,
that was so common in, you know, the mid-1990s.
Wait, this is incredible. Amazing.
That's pretty great, isn't it?
Robert, you're a genius, an actual genius.
Don't. This is it.
This is what I've been seeing in my visions, thank you.
So explain it to me again,
because I don't think I quite understand what you're talking about.
Okay.
Well, I took a bunch of existing technology
and sorta Frankensteined it together.
Frankensteined.
Again, it's not my tech, but I did combine it in a new way,
and now what I have is,
well, I think it's what a lot of people
have been trying to crack for a pretty long time.
I'm able to compress and uncompress video
to play back and with a bit of tweaking
I think it'll be pretty good to broadcast live.
Live. Hey, lookit. I got goosebumps. This is it!
We are going to be very, very wealthy men.
And very famous men.
And very celebrated, and beloved men.
Well, I don't really want all that,
I just wanna pay off my mortgage, get braces on my daughter.
You're gonna pay your mortgage off in cash.
And you're gonna give your daughter solid gold braces.
Again, not really.
- Hey! Solid gold. - OK.
With live streaming, in order to make it fit
into a small enough amount of bandwidth to put on a modem back then,
you had to use a very powerful codec to compress it.
You can use mpeg
but more likely you were using software from companies called
Real Networks or Microsoft.
Robert Dunning takes a bunch of off-the-shelf
hardware and software components,
puts them together in a way that really, um,
produces some pretty stunning results.
It looks pretty good and Digital Motion is founded.
Yeah!
Here you go, here you go.
Yeah! Alright. Cheers.
So for sure one of the very first people we went to
was a guy named Bob Halperin.
I had met him through a common friend,
and I called him up and I said, I'd love to meet.
He had been one of the founders of RayCam,
you know this chemical and physical engineering.
Made a fortune, invested in Intel,
made a fortune, joined this venture capital firm
and it was basically this old guy
whose job it was to go and look for investments.
And that was my first discovery of what venture capital was.
- Netscape. - Netscape.
Uh huh? Okay, Netscape. What about em?
Um. Well, I'm sure you've been following their IPO.
Me and about the whole world. What about Netscape?
We didn't understand at all was required,
like, what was expected when you went to present,
and in some ways that helped us,
we didn't know the rules of the game at all,
and so we sort of stumbled our way in.
Well, like Netscape, um, we are web-based.
And like Netscape, there's nothing quite like us.
But we're better.
And we're gonna be bigger.
Imagine that you are a bowler. Or a punk rocker.
Or you know possibly a golfer.
Or a pastry chef, or a new mom.
Okay, I'm a new mom who bowls.
- Good. Congratulations. - Thank you very much!
Where do you meet other new moms who bowl?
I don't know, the beauty parlor?
Well, what are the odds you find that other new mom
who also bowls a decent game?
Bob, you need to join TheGlobe.com.
Or a group to promote your business.
Or a way to share plans with your family. Or photos.
Or games you can play with your friends.
It's an entire network.
But instead of a business formal-type network, it's a social network.
People will want to log on, I guarantee.
It's very addictive.
What most investors at the time didn't see
was the Internet for what it was,
a chat room and a chat experience,
they could wrap their heads around a little bit,
even though, you know, none of them chatted,
and so if you couldn't get your mind around that whole thing
and how you could live in the Internet,
there was no point in trying to convince those investors.
OK, so what we have in front of you.
Oh, these are our models for scaling and capitalization.
Okay, okay, okay! I love the energy.
I love the fact that you're both true believers.
- We are. - Thank you.
But for VCs to be interested,
you're gonna have to scale at 5 to 10 times
the growth rate you're showing here.
Look, sir, this is a new world.
This is day one of an entirely new world.
I can see down the road and the Internet...
You're not hearing me, son.
Let a man say, "Yes," for the love of Pete.
I'm in.
How far do you think 100K is going to stretch?
A month? Two?
Can we just enjoy the moment
before we go back to knocking on doors tomorrow?
Please. Can we please do that?
Yes.
Boys, count me in. Blew our minds away.
He was extremely supportive and he was a businessman
so I got tons of advice about how to run the company.
So I'm sure Todd and I both got drunk,
uh, on the flight back to New York.
You are the man, Dunning.
Every company I've talked to is on fire about your tech. It's.
Thanks.
Michael, we're all good on the legal side?
Registrations and such?
Yeah. Whatever the "genius" says.
That he is.
OK, alright. Watch this. Let's see.
What, seriously?
Yeah, just figured that one out yesterday.
That's a new one.
Bob wrote us our first $100,000 check
and then he was gonna make introductions.
We heard there was a motto at Netscape
which the CEO hyped a term he coined called GBF,
Get Big Fast, that's all that matters, GBF.
If you can get big
then it's harder for someone else to take you down.
Luckily we were finding one in a 100, yes, here's 100 grand,
here's 100 grand, and you know, this was allowing us to claw our way up,
throw in more servers, get a bigger space, hire a few more people
and it was this iterative process of hurrying up, hurrying up.
Meanwhile our users were signing up like crazy, I mean,
we just couldn't add enough chat rooms to fit everybody in.
We were growing by hundreds of percents every few months.
And we were now on this mission
to like relocate to New York City.
And so within a few months I found an office space,
it was just a completely gross empty traditional New York loft space,
but New York is New York.
We're gonna go do it our way on the East Coast.
That was our place, that's where we'd make our mark.
High-quality internet streaming had major, major potential
to, you know, mint, uh, you know, millionaires if not billionaires,
you know largely overnight.
Once Netscape went public and made all that crazy money
and people wanted in.
Every level of, uh, truth and fantasy existing at the same time.
There was legitimate money being raised, there was, uh, you know,
big clients that wanna get to the game and then there were the con artists.
Whoo!
Michael. What the hell is going on?
You haven't answered a single call or been around in a week.
Yeah, well, I'm trying to deal with this bankruptcy stuff
so that you and Chuck don't get arrested.
Arrested? What?
We're out of money, Robert, you get it?
The deals aren't coming through fast enough. So we're done.
I need to fold the company or, y'know, my ass is grass.
But what about all the investments?
Right now I just wanna make sure y'all are okay
and don't get in trouble for all this debt.
You're folding the company?
Hey, don't thank me until I'm sure we're outta the woods. Alright?
I'm certainly not thanking you.
Michael, what about the technology I created?
- Whoa, wow. - Yeah.
So, you paid to develop it?
- Well, obviously not. - You lived in your car imagining
how you were going to build this company?
Because I could have sworn that was me.
No, but I...
"But-but-but." Robert, you know what, you need to grow up.
I tried to help you, I tried to help Chuck,
I tried to build this company around my special vision.
What about the patents?
Please tell me you got the patents?
What? You think I had the time, the money
and legal help to get the patents done?
What do you think I'm some kind of billionaire octopus?
What are you talking about?
Hey, I am trying to keep you a free man.
I'm trying to take care of you here.
Do you get that?
No, this makes absolutely no sense.
I have no idea what you're talking about.
This is complicated stuff, it's CEO stuff,
- it's above your pay grade. - Michael, you can't just...
I can't just what, Robert?
You can't just close up shop without consulting your partners.
Trust me. I am on this like white on rice.
I got it covered.
And last time I checked you're an employee, not a partner.
An employee who hasn't been paid.
Beside I've got something of my own brewing as well,
- so I gotta get going. - Michael!
Hey, so I will be in touch. Alright?
Hey! Hey! Keep the faith.
Son of a bitch. Michael!
Dammit!
Hi, it's David. David Kim Stanley.
I know, I know, just listen to me.
Hey, just listen,
because this may be the last time you ever hear from me, OK?
This guy who has been calling himself Michael Fenne
is really somebody named David Kim Stanley
who is a fugitive of the law.
Hi. Michael Fenne. I'm Michael Fenne.
I'm Mike Fenne, what a pleasure.
David Kim Stanley.
David Kim Stanley was the son and the grandson of preachers
in Wise County, Virginia.
At some point he began holding himself out as an investor
who could help people in his town invest their money
for retirement and according to court records,
he received somewhere in the neighborhood of about $1.25 million
and had trouble paying almost all of it off.
He is sentenced to decades in jail.
Name deleted says that warrant is only for failure to appear.
They don't get the Feds in on a small-timer like me.
So a few more months of caution, surgery, and daily intercessory prayer,
and I will have completed my gauntlet.
You could have been with me, we could have been together,
free to come and visit
and communicate by the time the baby is born.
But you had no real love for me, no true faith in me.
It has come off, so far, exactly like I said it would.
It has always been, and always will be, a mistake
to lose faith and underestimate me.
God has blessed me with a unique ability to defy reality.
And if I die tomorrow, that would still be true.
We had about 12 to 15 employees
working from Ithaca at that time,
we had the talk with the rest of our team, and said guys,
we need to go into a bigger pond now, who's coming with us?
Punch it!
It's an Econoline van, Terry. This is it.
- We're totally gonna crash. - We're not going to crash.
I sense it. Now! (bleep)
Dammit!
- Nice navigating, Terry. - Sorry!
Get out of the way!
Let's go, let's go! Go, go, go, go!
Two, three, five. Plug them in.
- Right here, right here. - Nope, nope, nope. Hold up.
By the beginning of '97
we were fully relocated to New York City
and the whole team could not have been more excited.
We're up!
Right, Ter!
- Oh, (bleep) - What happened?
OK, what the (bleep)'s happened?
Hundreds of analysts and reporters showed up
and heard Microsoft chairman Bill Gates admit
Internet competitors have outflanked his company.
Until now the software giant Microsoft
has surprisingly paid little attention to the Internet.
That changed today.
He said Microsoft will try to compete vigorously
with Netscape in the Internet browser market.
Well good morning.
_
I was realizing this morning that December the 7th
is kind of a famous day.
54 years ago or something.
And I was trying to think if there was any parallel
to what was going on here.
And I really couldn't come up with any.
The only connection I could think of at all
was that probably the most intelligent comment
that was made wasn't made on Wall Street, or by any type of analyst;
it was actually Admiral Yamamoto.
It actually Admiral Yamamoto
who observed that he feared they had awakened
a sleeping giant.
A sleeping giant.
So that makes Netscape Imperial Japan?
If it hadn't been for us you could argue
that Microsoft would've waited another 2 or 3 years
to get around to doing something with a browser.
When we showed that it was an explosive market, Microsoft was very worried.
Once the giant woke up or whatever, they wanted to own it.
And they talked about it.
We decided like we want to have
the world's most successful web browser
on December 7th, 1995.
We want this to be the main way,
the main on ramp for humanity
for how they get on the web, our tool set,
our APIs, uh, our developer infrastructure.
In private, we were all very worried.
I have work to do.
Work fast, Yamamoto. They're gunning for you.
Fix my hand. Thanks, Johnny. Ahem.
Can you hear me? Good?
Yeah, 'Kay. Well. Good morning.
I was realizing this, I was realizing, bleh-bleh-bleh.
We'll try that again.
Well good morning.
This eh, ahem. One more time.
Sync & corrections by emeline-whovian www.addic7ed.com