Marc Andreessen on Building Netscape & the Birth of the Browser
01:42:50 Share

IT was this invitation to basically do anything that was this kind of great moments where you just kind of felt like the future was like in front of you. It's very important to know that at this point and all the way up until really ninety ninety four, the overwhelmed uniform universal expected was there that would never be a business.

I at the time completely lacked the skills set in the perspective to navigate, I would say, inner, personal in a particularly gecpt situations. I am not you how to do so much of computer science at that point was about optimising spare resources, because that was all you had of that time. And they had spent decades figure out how to do that.

And we collectively decided to just break that rule. You've probably heard of the browser. In fact, billions of people use browsers as their gateway to the internet, and you might even be using one right now to access this very podcast recording. Now, in today's episode from the ben mark show, mark dyson and ben horwitz share the real story behind the creation of nesi, a web browser co created by mark that revolutionized the internet and, quite Frankly, change the world as the notes up top. Until today, this story has never been fully told, either in its entirety or actually in this one of one conversation.

Mark n band discuss Marks early life and how IT shapes journey into technology, pivotal moments at the university billin's that LED to the development of mosaic, a renney browser that mark developed as an underground, which is widely reference as the first White use browser, and the fierce competition and legal battles that ensued as netscape rose provides benchmark, also reflect on the broader implications of nescafe success, the importance of an open internet and the lessons that still resonate in today's tech landscape. Especially with A I that is so much more I hope you enjoy. Who will decide the future of the internet read right on a book by asic, stancy general partner and author critics takes on one of the most consequential questions of our time, which is also the key to unlocking more entrepreneurship, more creativity and more innovation from A I that compensates artists to social networks that reward you for participating.

Read right shares a playbook for building the next era of the internet. Learn more at read right down dot com. Okay, you idiot, like this junk commercial opportunity is staring in the face you literally have like inbound sales leads like coming out of your ears.

Like why don't you go raise venture capital, start a company? yes. Of course the answer was because I had no idea that there was such a little, you know, in a tractor was yes. Thank exactly.

The content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, business, tax or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investor or potential investors. In any a sixteen z fun, please note that a sixteen z and it's a filter may maintain investments in the companies is discuss in this podcast for more details, including a link to our investments. Please see a sixteen z dot com slashed disclosures .

walk up to the mark benchill today is a super special episode because we are going to talk about the origin of the web browser and the invention of the web browser. And we have won the coining tors with us right here in mark. So it's exciting.

It's also exciting because this story is never really been told either in its entirety or accurately. And so we're gonna a chance to do that. For those of you who are so Young that you're not quite sure what a web browser is anymore, IT is kind of how most people experiences internet.

So you might got the internet. It's a thing. Chrome, let's start the very beginning because, you know, one of the things that is kind of one of the largest disinformation campaigns going is this whole idea that people, entrepreneurs and people who invent things are kind of born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

And almost none of the successful we work with. Is that the case for they all come from you know somewhere between like refuge and middle class backgrounds. And you certainly we're not born with the silver point in your mouse to tell us a little bit about where you grow up.

You didn't grow in a big city. You grow up in a small town. What was that like? And then what is the light growing up? And how did you first encounter the internet?

yeah. So let me, if I could, to start our session today with two disclaimers, which may be related your questions. So disclaimer number one is we're going to be talking about advances that happened over thirty years ago, low memory problems.

yeah. So no, i'm going to tell the truth as I remember that I may get things wronger or the people may have different recollections. And so I have to disclaim that is because I I can't swear that al accuracy of stuff that was that longer go but out.

Some of the stories, I understand that. And then I say the other story is there are twists and turns on the way where I would just characterized IT as at the time, I was irritated at other people for things that happened, I think, and fall of the time. Whatever realized is that I just, at the time, completely the skills set and the perspective to navigate, I would say, inner, personal and in particular democratic situations.

I have no clue how to do anything. And so I think when you get into your background, people can stand .

sometimes describe I was feral at this point in my life. And so it's always this thing if you could rerun prevents, like what the skills that I have today, I couldn't navigate IT a much Better and a bunch of things going to turn out different. But I certainly do not have the skulls set of the time.

So anyway, if that sounds like i'm criticizing other people, it's actually not what I am end. It's going to be more ultimately to criticizing myself in the sense of whatever happened that I didn't like at the time. I think I was at least partly, if not wholly responsible for yeah because I .

and you know yang man can be like that from time to damn you know yes.

I was I was raw aggression at that point with very little yes of rosse members. This because he meet me shortly after advance for about to talk about. So first of all, the modern class is, know you on mask. Father had an mal mine.

right when he showed up the U. S. With two thousand and hours actual story.

Yeah, exactly. So there is all this kind of fake histories that are kind of red kind to people who grow up in, in some cases, of pretty tough backgrounds. yeah.

So I grow up in the american made west was concern and for people who have spent time and was consent, there are basically three. Wisconsin are sort of the big city maloy, which is like, no, like a big, almost like a chicago. I think that's its own world.

And then there's medicine, which is like a very kind of hippy college town that was actually kind of a core of activity in the sixties. And then there's the rest of us consent, which is completely disconnected from those two cities, which has nothing to do and has no face in of those two places at all, and is sort of the role ID west, which is basically farming country. And so and actually I understand up.

yeah, I think that's right.

If you get ten minutes outside of you there, the Walker medicine, you get into a real, real world territory in a hurry, right? And so there are people in the farming world and in the west, after nine hundred seventy have coming. I memories .

about houses, but you didn't have gas heat. So you're in there is also .

that exactly? So yeah. So if you wants to hit your house, you cut down the wood. And so look, it's up north and it's very close to canada, so it's extremely cold.

And so it's actually this amazing thing where it's sort of hundred, hundred months and then three months of summer, you know about mostly farming, you know a lot of dairy farming, a lot of corn, fifth cows, so the cows, and then I would say light manufacturing, light tourism, lot of all our people vacation up there, go hunting, fishing or whatever. So a little bit of that, but most agricultural, my time was sign on the outside of town forever, population thirty hundred and nine. The sign never changed of .

whether you have thirteen or eight or thirteen. Yeah, I don't think I actually .

moved her on that much. So it's probably more less secure at the whole time. And then course, the running joke was that thirteen hundred nine, including the cause. So yeah, a very small time environment, kind of little, little class context. And the public, through twelve school, my school was very small, twenty five kids in the class.

School of people don't have school choice. Today, you don't have teacher choice. This is one teacher, very subject. good.

No, exactly. Then, you know, this is the seventies and the eighties. And so just not only pretence the internet, but this is also pretty tes cable TV.

We had no cable TV longer. And from calls we're still a dollar a minute. We actually neighbor d growing up, actually, we had a party phone line for the entire neighbor's that's interesting, which is actually quite an adventure.

So there's a single phone number for the nearest od. And so when you're phone rings, everybody neighbor picks up the phone. This true, this is true. And then there's a this an arbitration process of verbal arbitration process for who the calls actually for and then the expectation is that everybody else hangs up, but you know they don't have .

to they say there are no secrets in the small town.

This is one of the reasons why. So yeah so it's hard if I don't know halfway between the nineteen thirties in the nineteen eighties or something is one of those places where a lot, a lot of country is like that at that point, which is I had fully adapted. It's certainly the things that we all have take for granted and then you have to discover the internet.

So I had no idea the internet even existed until I want to college. The thing I knew that that existed in this is where I kind of got lucky intervention. Ve, when I grew up, when I came of age, I came of age sure to precisely at the moment when the PC happened.

And so I was aware of, you know, there were all the zing mt, I late seventies, and then IT sort of headlights early eighties, especially around eighty two. And then, you know, our school there was very most started to get a handful of early computers. And then there were a wave of consumer computers at that time that we're actually quite an expensive. And so there were computers at that time as cheap as two hundred dollars .

in currency that point, which, and I look, puppy desk, so this is pretty. Or post her drive when you got your first computer profile .

y disk and take, is that take for exactly? Yes, OK.

it's a slow loader roof, big or a lot. Again, are you remember that? yes. So we don't remember before flab us.

you little hook up of a set, Taylor. Er and the thing with concerta player is IT didn't have any kind of seek capability, right? And so the way that you loaded the programme as you had a fast ford by hand right point of the tape, yeah right.

And then you're always at rescue. You're going to write to the tape. You wrote a program you wanted to write IT you out of the tape, you have run the rescue going overwrite something in the past.

Yeah and then there was this really fundamental trade off. If you don't have a lot of money, is this really fundamental tradeoff? Ff, which is you could buy a short cassette pe that was high quality, yeah right.

And or a smaller stuff or you could buy same Price. You could buy a cause tape that was much longer and could record a lot more, but at much more quality. And that matter because the little quality tapes, frequently you would not be able to read back what you would written.

So there was a real quality, quality trade off exactly.

And then so we didn't have the internet, but then we had no exposure to the internet. We'll talk about the internet prehistory and a little bit, but we didn't have that. What was happening at that time was what recall B B S S, which is actually for blower systems.

And you know what to think about these BBS is where kind of free social networks, in a way, pre internet. And so the way this would work is the host of a BBS with literally set up a set of modems in their house apartment. Often like eight or twor twenty or something to take incoming calls from people with remote computers.

And then you in theory, you could dial in the BBS and you just literally used a motive and you dial into the phone number for the BBS. And then if you got on the BBS, IT was really cool because you had access to early versions of like email and social networking and user profiles and bolton boards and classified ads and downloading games and playing games and so forth. And so it's kind of free internet P, A, well, kind of versions, these things.

The problem of that I had is, again, world was going launched the phone calls, dollar a minute. There are no B, B, S, as in my town. So I read about B, B, S, S.

I actually don't. To this day, I think I never actually use one because I could not afford IT. And by the way, also, this is also predates bad baLance when I first started on this stuff.

This is actually promote m as we understand IT today. So the form of the modem at the time was was called an acoustic coupler. And so you take your fashion telephone handset and you literally put IT, yeah, no, I remember those yeah right in the two ruber cups. And then it's literally using your hand tell phone as the receive, transmit for the other signals. And so accused couple of models were three hundred board, three hundred years for second.

Yes, very, very noisy three body.

very noy exact. Yeah, very slow. So you could kind of get a glimpse. I would say the romance of the proper computer at that point was very clear.

And that's what really got me, was embraced the way that you'd want a computer you plugged into your TV set those days. And what happened was you literally, you got injected into a the basic programming language interpreter. And what that shows up as is literally the screen would say, ready.

And then there was a curse, and for a kind of kids, managed IT. Was this invitation to basically do anything right? And he was this kind of great moment where you just kind felt like the future was, like in front of you.

And then there were all these. This became a pop kind of culture thing. And so they're all these books of magazines you could buy or describe to that.

You describe that you know, hobby st magazine in for our kind of computer you had, and IT would literally have pronounce in the magazine of programs that you could actually sit and type in to your computer, type into the basic prompt and make work. And so there was this incredible sensitive adventure for what you could do on a computer. And then there was this additional thing out there, which was wall.

If you could afford that, you could be on B, B, S, S, and you could talk about the people. And so they kind of had that network thing for the beginning. It's just the economics at the time was not feasible that be a mass market.

Yeah, yeah. Interesting, interesting. okay. So in men, you get the university of villaines.

And why did you go there? Why not medicine or MIT, or where to have you? financially?

The schools were the options. And then IT turns out to now is a great engineer school. And so medicis very good. But chappel banner, one of the top engineer schools in the country. And so just nice coincidence that, that was going to close enough and inexpensive.

And I also haven't have national computing supercomputing.

yeah. So this is where I got really lucky. So I dropped in the linos as a new student start on dw, decided I did not care at all about the engineering, and I switched in the computer science, which is much Better fit.

But I showed up as a student and and basis was my big truck of was this was, I was still know, in one thousand nine hundred eighty nine. So this was four years into two federal programs that basically created a precondition for everything that followed with the internet. And the two programs were something I think was called the national supercomputing act.

And IT was basically this effort to basically fund IT has funded for what we're called national supercomputing centers at four universities. One voice was annoy. And so the campus is the photo government just dropped in a tony money to basically buy state your computers, including at the time, really big computers, like these big crayon taking machines, computers.

The cost by twenty five million dollars at the time, and filled up entire rooms, the supercomputers. Those stays were so big that in some cases, you d actually build a building for them, and you'd build a building and but you wouldn't close the roof and you would lower the computer by a crane down through the roof and of the center of the building, and then then you would finish the roofs. And so the big, exactly.

So a very uh etern expensive, powerful systems. So we have those. And then the other federal program was the program to build that was called the nsf net.

The S F. There are being sure for national science foundation, which is the government agency, that the money came through. And the S F.

Net basically was the first internet package as we understand IT today. And those programs were joined because there was no purpose. The s. Net was to connect together the supercomputing centers and then to allow researchers, scientists in many other colleges, universities across the country to be able to remotely access these large centralize supercomputers.

Take a moment here to kind of pay credit al gore on this, who famously gets just like in less shit for people kind of saying that he said he invaded of the internet and so just defend else on her for a moment. He never actually that he went on the internet. What he said is he took the lead in the senate and creating the internet.

And what he wanted by that was not that he said on the roth the code for that, what he meant was he was one of the real leaders, one of the main forces in the senate, as he fund these two programs. And these two programs LED directly of the internet as we know IT today. And so he and his colleagues at that time really stepped up at a pivotal moment. And and I think that's actually very relevant kind of what's happening today with the eye, like I think that's actually the same thing this happen to the eyes today.

Well, it's kind of the opposite of what's happening with A I in universities today, which is they're not only under fun to do A I, but there is a push among the big tech companies to enact legislation that would essentially outlaw A I universe by liminal country. So four credit tell gore for doing the right tank because it's clear that was an obvious yeah, that's right.

We've been spending a lot time of washington to late, and we've actually been telling the story to a lot of current senators and encouraging them to basically do the same thing. Yeah the democrat on IT because that rebuilt its all or the republicans.

I got to get through the core part party.

But I seem to think it's a good idea. So I hope that will happen. So basically my great luck was I showed up at an eighty nine and basically four years into these federal programs.

And so I showed up basically just got glassy under the future in one step. Because when I showed up there, there was, you know, I was actually wired. IT was one of the hub nodes of the internet backbone, and the campus was getting wired for broadband. And there were computers, and computer lives were stated, there are equipments all the way up to these giant create supercomputers that the computer science department had access to, like they was just, there was like being begin of the future. Now the twist on that is the assumption in those days was you would use this stuff wire in school.

And so they had started to give out, like a email addresses underground and things like that, right? But the assumption was that you would use these systems while you were in school and then your view state and became a fact member of something, you would see systems for your research. But if you graduated and just one out of into the real world you have.

those are access to change, right? Maybe you could can describe what the internet was at that point because when we say internet, people imagine a lot of things, but that somewhat IT was that in terms of the user experience?

Yeah, that's right. It's a couple of thing. So one is it's very important to know that at this point and all the way up until really ninety, ninety, the overwhelming uniform universal expectation was there or that would never be a business.

There will never be a business. There will never be an industry. There was never going to be money to be made.

There was never going to be a commerce. There was never gonna be streaming video. There was never gonna stores any of the stuff, by the way.

Even the idea of having, like, newspapers on online was considered bizarre. There was never going to be that I was supposed to be scientific research papers and experimental data and things like that. And so that was very much not viewed as like a commercial opportunity. IT was viewed very much not that way basically, I think, but up until like and I think zero of the big tech companies.

that era took us seriously. Zero before, in fact, the opposite. They were built in kind of parallel systems to the internet, often referred to as the information superhighway. You obligates was a huge kind of champion of the information superhighway, and specifically not the internet. So yeah, and he was kind of the biggest figure in pressure and soft pRobing in the industry at the time.

Yes, for the big computer companies want to to build property where when they were doing that. And by the way, a well was up and running by ninety four. A of got going around eighty nine kind of the same time I shot up at eleven, but I really kind of hit critical mass, basically a consumer scale version of the BBS idea that we described.

And then and ninety three and famous ly interconnected itself with the internet. And all of us that all air also describes became internet users. And so there was that, but even even happened until eighty three. But there were certainly no vision for that, I think in the way, eighties, and there were no consumer ized PS. And then there were no Normal businesses online.

And in fact, the internet, up until one thousand and ninety three, the N, S, F, net, which then turned into the internet, the Operating under something that the federal government decade called the acceptable use policy, the A, U. P. And because the N S.

Net was federally funded, commercial activity on the net was actually banned, right, because he was viewed as a certain inappropriate use of federal research dollars. And so IT actually would not have been legal to engage in commercial tivy. And so the basic was none.

And then yeah then the big phone companies and the big media companies at that time didn't even want to build like B B S S S or anything you do not related. What they want us to do is basically what we now know is streaming. They wanted to do what they called at the time, interact with television. And the big killer after television was called video on demand. And so sort of the revolutionary idea at that time that instead of watching whatever was on A T, V channel at that moment, you could be watch whatever you want, like clicking a button, and then maybe you could pizza.

Interestingly, there is a small minor ban with problem, without idea. I recall a great yeah was actually an .

idea that was ahead of its time. Extreamly video didn't really work in the way that we understand IT today until probably fifteen years later. right? Yeah.

yeah. yes. I mean, well, really, when netflix ks.

Made the cut over from cds to stream enrich was late two thousands, right? yeah. I remember .

meeting with three hastings, and I think two thousand four. And inflicts was up and running and was very successful doing D V, D rental by mail and reads a technical junior s in addition to being a business seniors. And he said, i'm thinking about doing streaming.

And my first reaction was that crazy. It'll never work because even in two thousand four, like most people, internet have brought back connection fast enough to do like TV holiday. So the video at that point was actually these little postage standard ze videos s and I was like, I don't understand who's going to want to set there and wash a little positive stamp sized thing.

And read had correctly extrapolate that the broadband wave in the two thousands was onna result in streaming working. But just give you a sense of the delay there, right? So even a decade later, even a decade after the finding of the scape and all the mooning a nescafe, in a decade later, he was still considered weird, bizarre, to turn to stream videos.

Yeah, so the media companies in the really unities were not being run by technologists. And so they had a hard time, I think, mapping there was a famous interactive television information superhighway trial in the early nineties around this time, which was to do this video on demand. So to do this thing, we would have remote, and you could press button and watch whatever movie you wanted.

And I remember there was a trial they were trying to figure through the consumer for this. And so one of these companies stay wired, a neighbor od, to do the streaming of a video. But IT was a digital switch.

IT was analogue switched. And so they had a dedicated, long, basically analog lying wide each house in the back office. They had a bank of V C R S. Video tape players, and they had a video take player for each house. And then they had a wall video assets with all the movies that are option.

And then they had a guy on roller case and case to get to the roller, get their quick enough, because the user expectation was, you click the button, you watch the movie. yeah. And so the government roller gates had, like, shoot over to the wall of video tapes, pulled down the right tape, and then shoot down the hall to the right V, C, R, and get the tape in the V, C, R in press play before the couch potatoes, like giving up because the .

stream has started.

And so yeah, that idea was a bit early. But on the universe and our campus, like broadband existed, like I said, email existed. You asked, how do people use internet those days? So the sort of IT was mostly, but there was reading up at that point, there was an apple telnet that you would use to basically log into another computer on the network.

And that was actually very important because that's how the scientists would use the supercomputers. And actually, the group I was ended, I I know I actually built one of the main tell that apps. There was an APP called FTP that was a filed down, loading up.

And so you could uploading downadup iles. There was early email, so that works. There was early what we're called news groups, which is like basically form kind of early social network in. But I think of the time, those are probably the four main things that people did.

And I was all scientists and computer science majors on the internet fairy call. I mean that there was real, nobody else.

yes. So this is, at the time, eighty nine. I mean, I guess there were somewhere between five hundred thousand and million people told a long line.

And yeah, I was basically the IT was the basically the faculty, staff and students at these four supercomputing centers. IT was the remote users. And then I was like, the defense contractors got wired up early, and then there were branches of the government.

They got wired up early. And then there was like the national labs, and you know, they were then a handful of hobby est. We figured out a way to get online.

And so, yeah, so so basically, IT was first, all IT was like, one hundred percent people. The west, you overwhelmingly vy U. S.

In europe, IT was a very heavily, obviously, english dominated from the very beginning. IT was extremely a technical, scientific, or that almost everybody on IT had a scientific, technical gree. IT was also very, as a consequence of all that.

You know, this incredible, you brilliant. This, like a million, is smart of people on the planet. So the the calibre, the people in the quality, the discussions was like sky high.

So I remember being the old, these groups were unbelievable. I remember like there was like a bug in a compiler like you could find out about IT. And you know there will be work around and what like the level of expertise on those things was absolutely.

And look, many of the smart st people in the scientific and technical world at that point we're in there. And they would tokyo if you had something international to say. And so if you posted on a new group, they would respond.

And so IT was like this distributed community of, like, you know, the smart, scientific, technical minds in the planet. IT was IT was really special. And and then also because there was no money, you know, there there there were no ads, you there, there were no scams.

There was no fraud. There was no, no spam. No, I remember there was actually a scandal. There was a, there was a guy who figured out that this was like a right for A M, and started the first spam new group messages. And I was like a big scandal at this time that somebody somebody would actually do that because like a guy just literally started to do that, right? And but no, I run for years .

that anybody even trying that. Yeah, that's unity. That's the true in of unity, right?

Like you have all people of the same culture in one placed that scale. That's that's amazing. yes. So people who were .

on that at the time kind of always look back at that. They miss IT because that has never been reconstituted. no. Look, a lot of of people in the equivalent are like on exit, the other social forms.

But there are minority population and much larger, you know, context everywhere now or as at the time they were the entire population. Yeah so that was a super magical thing. But but yeah, I looked actual functional use cases were quite limited. And yeah so yeah that sort of what what I saw when I got there maybe helpful because I think it's really relevant most of the the the followed but also the A I discussion. Maybe if I could maybe I could go back in history now a kind of where the internet came from.

Yeah, yeah. Go go back to, like the late sixties. yeah. So.

so the idea of the internet was sort of famously, this idea of what was called a pack switch network, right? The reason the internetworking is because it's this peer to peer system in which computer, you know, anybody can kind of plug a computer into the internet, you going to have mesage are able to go round and round.

And so, you know, famously, this is an idea that actually was developed originally by the defense department in the one thousand nine hundred sixties called pack a switching. And in particularly there's a guy, paul brian, who's kind of the original, you know of true founding father, know god, father of the of this idea. And actually he's a great, he's a great story on this going back to yourself spoon thing.

So he was born, he was a jewish, jewish polish immigrant to the U. S. And so his parents came, brought him as a small child of the U.

S. Than one thousand eight of classic american immigrant success story. His father opened uh grocery store and then was able to make enough money to send his college brand.

He was a super genius as he got an engineer degree. And then he actually went to hear on my mother. He went U, C, L, A. For a masters degree when he got in one thousand and fifty nine and computer science, by the way, his masters degree in one thousand and nine computer .

science was on character recognition 啊。

right? A I so like he was actually so is like he tried to do. A I first, you know, he was early on that, yeah, you know you know he got part way there.

But so you know, he was already at that point trying to do A I and then he went, he went to work for the rent corporation, which did a lot of work for the defense department on military of strategic topics. And there was a huge, the high of the cold war. So this is in the early sixties, cuban missile crisis.

You know where there was a real feeling that you, there might be nuclear award in a moment. And one of the big concerns that the fest department had was in a nuclear strike, the way telecom systems work at that point, as if you took out the central al office, you took out an entire telecom and network. And so the fear the defense department was the soviet presumptive new, where the central searching officers were for, like A T N.

T. network. And so they would bomb those, you know, in a nuclear strike. And then basically what would happen is the us. Would lose command and control of its nuclear weapons.

And so basically, IT was a way, is the fear was, IT was a way for the soviet to do call the decapitation strike. They take out the central searching office, may, tt, and then the us. Can't we tell you a little of U. S.

Would not be able to fight, you know, to fire us nukes? Because I couldn't send the command. Actually, I fire fire the nukes. And so IT was this existence, al kind of thing at the moment.

And so this guy pope, and said, well, what if we build a network that basically is designed for pack switch instead of being circus switch, everything he's going through a central place for pack switch, whether the pack is to flow around and a part of the network is bombed or destroyed, or taking off line, power cut or whatever, you know, the network kind of reality. cates. And the significance of this idea is not just that in the net, the other significance is, and he thought IT was the crazy .

idea I have ever heard. Yeah yeah. Because you need control.

control.

control. There is central control. Yeah.

I was reading, just refreshing myself. And republican in the york times. And venture is quoted in the abbati ary saying that bob and was basically laughed out of A T N T. When he proposed this idea, right, because IT was IT was such a herrera idea, so anyway, so the point being is the internet was a herrera idea for the very becoming.

And I thought in both the matter would never work because you'd be like entirely too slow and the packet assembly and all that would never work. And then also that I was a dumb idea, because, of course, you want a central control still like that. They derided him in every direction possible.

Yeah, yeah. Well, as late, that was one thousand nine hundred and sixty four.

twenty years later. Idea that would never work horribly.

idea it'll never work exactly right. That was one thousand nine hundred sixty four when he proposed this as late twenty years later, in one thousand nine hundred and eighty four 啊， a federal judge went to break up A T N T, which at that time was the national telecomm and apply, they want to control everything.

And H A N T actually got the secretary defense in one thousand and eighty four, twenty years later, to testify that that if the federal just broke up, A T N T would permanent cripple the U. S. Is command control capability for nuclear weapons, right? And so even twenty years later, people don't know, people didn't believe IT IT IT was still a heretical idea. And by the way, eighty four significant because, of course, the very next year. And eighty five is when the internet was funded, right? And so IT was IT was like a twenty IT was a twenty year journey to get from that original heretical idea with resistance all way through the get to the point where algo on and his colleagues figured out that actually know IT was there was actually good idea, and they should actually put money in IT.

So what i'd really like to know, and I think a lot of people, what is so you have this network with some supercomputers on IT and a bunch of scientists and some news groups, like, what did you get to this idea? Because nobody else had the idea. I say, like, first, all nobody else had the idea.

And secondly, if you had not had the idea when you had the internet, as we know, that probably doesn't happen in that the kind of microsoft alternative, the alcohol alternative, we've had an opportunity to gain the network effect. And so the chance of all this getting built, I mean, maybe if he was invented six months later, but four years later. And so what happened? Yeah, so there were serious .

efforts underway. You needed to this, but there were serious efforts at times. So I admired the efforts. And so there were basically consumer online services that came out of eighties, a well compute serving protection, a, you know, became famous later, much larger computer of a Peter. At one point, protect was actually an IBM venture.

So were actually that part of the early and then and know this systems existed in the early nineties. Those are all these proprietary, no sort of preparatory stove piped, not interconnected, not open. These are called, by definition, close systems.

And for people, remember this, if if you wanted to like put content up on a well, you had to go, you had to pay a well, like you had to like you to get any new edict, their permission, they are approval and they can take IT down. And and so any any of these stove pipe preparatory things, somebody really isn't charge and the the internet is the opposite of that. And so know those systems ran like that.

And then there were a set of companies that then we're gonna the you're looting to that were going to do the leap frog on that and kind of do the gooey version of of that. And that was, uh, specifically microsoft with M S N. The time was calm S N and then apple had something at the time called e world.

And then who else was turning around a whole bunch of these other companies running. And then the video companies were doing these preparatory video, you know, interaction TV things that would would also be centralize, controlled. But yeah particular I think probably at the time that was really the the big ones would have been an you would have been a well, getting really big IT would have been IT would have been a microsoft establishing its own of permanent property or no online service as an alternative to internet. And then that would have been probably apple, you with its own proprietary system, probably would have been the big three. And and you look, those companies would love for that to happen like all all three, those companies would be much Better off that happened.

Get a vig on every transaction.

Yeah, this is actually the famous that, and just use the word vig. So there was a famous interview with microsoft T O at the time that they were turned to make M S, N work made for private system and resting guy. And he said, he said, yeah, he said, and actually to his credit, he kind of set IT out loud.

He said, yeah. The goal this program is to get a vig of every online transaction. But you know vig being the mafia term for, you know.

your slice of the pie. English .

figures exactly. So so and you know yeah they they would have you know they would have fat total. So if you think about the level of control the big tech has uh today, like IT would have bend like that times ten.

And that that really was where the the industry was headed. And and those companies had a big advantage at the time because if one is they just had tremendous resources like they were funded to do this. And then the other thing is that know the time, you know, look to just get this stuff to work as hard.

And they could martial thousands of engineers, and they could design everything to work in a completely integrated manner. And they had, you know, all these graph designers to make a beautiful, and they all these perform stationers to make IT fast. And you know, they could run big advertising campaigns and and do consumer to consumer support.

I'll tell the story later how I became the consumer support, I became the user support. That's for the entire internet for body year and a half myself. It's an amazing, but you know, amazing job.

They would have had. They would have had the ability to know they had a lot of neural advantages to be able to to do IT in the preparatory way that they wanted. And so this was a critical period for for that yeah the the internet, as we know today, didn't didn't have to happen.

So so basically, I think in retrospect, what just happened as a couple things. So one is just the generation of super genius like, and you your friend kline rock, and then there and you these these all these really bright eyes who had created internet as as as kind of the network side a bit. They just they were networking people and they just didn't they didn't their natural, you know, kind of world was not user interfaces and consumer services and content and media and you know, gaming and you know, all all, all these application level things.

They they just spit the way these systems are built as they just assume somebody else gonna all that and and that hadn't really happened yet. And so yeah so just part of IT with people they hadn't tried. Part of IT was IT was in a business and so there was no business motivation to try to do IT.

And then also part of IT was there was another quite gentle thing that happened, which was arrival of the of the graphical PC. And so the rivals, the arrivals specifically of the macintosh, and followed by that arrival of windows, windows version three and and the first graphical pcs. And so before about one thousand nine hundred ninety two or so, you you weren't gna have a graphical face anything because you don't have graphics use interface at all.

And so there was also a moment time thing that happened there. There was all that, yeah so that my part of the story was I was I had a bunch of a jobs in college and was going to my computer science degree, and then I ended up working for was called N. C. S. A, which was the national center for supercomputing, which which was .

you're a fresh one at the time, or a software when you got that job.

So I actually didn't actually didn't start working there, told a junior. So I worked. When I was a freshman, I worked in a physics lab called the materials research lab there, which which was actually a great and three point for me, because that was one of the main lab using the big supercomputers.

yeah. And so I I kind of got bugged into that world early. And then, and then my software year, I spent nine months actually as a club student working for IBM in Austin. And I worked on the work stations at the time, which was again, very, very helpful for this, because these are kind of .

the leading add user interface, T C P I P, right.

built in. I am in Austin at the time. Now this is when I B M was on top of the world. That was by far the most important. That company is still at that point.

And now we have this do at six thousand person division and Austin working on these these new unique for stations of the time, graphical work stations. And and again, they had the resources. Everybody there was also wired.

Everybody was on, they turn out. These word stations were designed to be used on. They are n at.

And I was, I was at the time, did not have any international cape of built. You know, there was in in the early ninety. There was no T, C, P, I P. There was never .

yeah computers. You recall this yeah computers, pcs and max, up until ninety three and four, I didn't even come A T C, P, I, P. Built into the computer, built a captain system.

Actually, you actually to buy a what is called A C C P P stack is a separate thing. Wk, when soc, and in these things. And so yeah, but the unix stations of that, you know the problem of the unix work stations as they cost like fifty thousand dollars.

And so these are consumer products. But if you had one, you had internet. Working built into IT. And then if you were at IBM like I was or an oil like I was, you were also on the internet.

And so I I have got to see, know, I saw the bricks being put in place for what followed. And and then I I knew how to work because, you know, my job was to do engineering on all these things. And then basically there was this moment in basically, I think IT was ninety two, ninety one, ninety two.

There was this moment where there were basically three online efforts to kind of do friend and new kinds of of sort of user interfaces, interaction models for the the internet at that point. And so and there was famously IT was there was three of them. There was one called golfer.

There was one called ways. And and then there was the worlwide web deminers ly. And so and and these were, in the very beginning, these actually, and roll back off with each other.

There were a lot of people who have different opinions about which of these were going to win. Golfer was actually based on the user. User interfaces of the BBS is in the eighties.

And so IT was IT was a IT, was a menudo system. And so you could go down all these different venues and down the content so forth. And then ways, W A I S, he was called wide area internet search. Ways was like a pre google, pre google, so attention. And so sort of the idea that you would have type and search key words in a back results.

And then and then this guy, tiburon ers lee in switzerland, english guy working at at, at series, had this kind of really, at the time, radical idea, which was to take an old idea called hypertext and bring you out of the internet, and and basically be able have documents that can links to point to other documents. And and this is an idea that goes back to the fifties. Guy and g angle bar and other guy ted Nelson know have kind of conceived this idea decades earlier.

But the computer systems in the fifty sixties were not quite capable doing IT. And so tim, tim, tim basically said he was sitting and certain you're of doing you related kinds of words that, you know, he was working in kind of support of the physical ysp sts is certain in the same way that I was working in support of the official. So kind of a similar, similar, similar universe and know he had this idea by OK were going to put hypertext, we're going to put hybrid text on on the internet in the form of the web.

But I would describe this at the time as all three of these were like, very, I was in nasal exchange efforts. And then really critically, all three were text based. And and again, the assumption here was internet, basically, as the assumption was internet slow, which for most people of that time that was.

And the assumption was internet slow, your computer slow, your network section is slow. And so golfer was literally x text based menu ways, was type in a text keyword and then get back text results. And then the web was hypertext, and IT was there was a text document, and then IT contains linked documents.

But like just as example, the web, when I was urgently conceived, didn't have images just because is the idea that the network would have the capacity to be able to do images was just still too much of a reach. And then basically people started, you know, bunch of people online started to play with this. And and then, no. And then I I ked up, I was doing at the time, but I was working on on a some I related project and then figured out that you know, with with a bunch my colleagues, there is the time that there was a, we have ultimate a of the let moc.

uh, so so what was your other job? Yeah.

so what I so what I got higher to do at nca, what I got hired to do is I got hired into group called the software development group, which was the group that was basically supposed to make, again, funded by the national science foundation, supposed to make tools, visibly open store tools that would make an easy for scientists to use the nsf, that, and to use the supercomputers, right. And so those tools I mentioned earlier called tell net.

So we we made this, we made N, C, S, A tell net, which was the main way you would log into remote computers. We had, I think at the time, I think we had fp client server. We had so we had like a variety of these kinds of tools that you would use for, know for these things.

By the way, we also, we're doing early work. And V, R, at the time, there was this whole focus. So there was this whole focus.

What was that? The time called scientific realization. And this is sort of, and this is, this is sort of what later became like especial effects in movies. But this this was actually pre like atos sic park and and prety terminator too.

And so this, the idea was to like, you know, these supercomputers would do these like black hole simulations, or whether simulations or something, and then you could actually use these graphic workstations that actually render movies, and you could actually show scientific results in visual form. And so the group, the group had a lot, actually, those guys actually, a lot of those guys actually went on. And actually, ultimately, they created the computer graphic industry and both computer industry.

And then also in the in the in film television. So that was also A A thing that was happening then. And and then actually the V R idea was actually really present at the time.

And so were attempts to do to do VR. And our our sister campus at universe eleonor chicago actually had something called the cave, which was IT was an alternate version of V R. So the main VR idea, of course, was a has stet strap your face, which is what people have today at chicago. They had the idea of of the cave, which was, no, you're actually in a physical space and you have giant monitors around you, right? And so you you're actually you're actually .

you're ross vegas.

like like the realize vegas, like the realized vega s, and also like the the way that a lot of these new movies and T, V shows are film now, and something they call the volume. We share sound stages that are literally made up of walls and ceilings that are giant display panels showing you graphic rendered scenes and imaging.

And someone raised that the become the the most practical idea. Yeah.

was really well. So the first TV show that use that technique called star wars show the mandelstam, which is a huge access. And if you watch them in the lorian is actually really they did a great job on IT.

If you watch IT, IT seems like they are outside all the time, and they're not the most of that. Most of that series was filmed when IT seems like they're outside. That was filmed in a very small sound stage in an environment with giant L C, D displays on all sides.

And then with all this often are is control offer, are they have where they could literally shift the perspective of the of the, of the, like the background scenes to match, like the emotions of the actors. And they've like, they have overhead lights so they can like replicate the sun, like sun said. And so actually, so anyway, so that cave idea in nineteen ninety two actually is now state of the art hollywood.

Yeah, no. IT was too early. We didn't know.

We didn't have the quality, the screens backside or quality of the graphics. So IT wasn't ready yet. But like now, now that was ready. So another one of these back to the future things yeah so so anyway, so that's what the group at lona was doing.

And then the specific project I was on as a project called collage, and I did for collage today, you describe this sort of a four render to zoom or two, you know, maybe sky or something like that. And if I did have the idea of doing audio and maybe hopefully doing video conversing, but the main thing was like a shared White board and then shared documents. And so visible, C, C, of the idea was a real time collaboration.

And and so you know, you and I scientists in two different writing a paper together, we want to be able to look at the paper at the same time and be able to make edits such that we can, you know, see each other, other's edits, like, like google dox like to play google ox works today, or to have a White board where you could you could look at image reor. You could look at you draw diagrams and you can share them, we're kind of together and and take them like you had to share White board and you I think that was that was like a good I think that was a good idea, like all of that stuff has happened and is very important today. IT was just I think IT was in retrospect, IT was just before its time, which is you just like the internet, what's that out of order .

and what you should build first out of order? Yeah.

there were two problems. Or just one is that is just hard to get IT to work because you you needed a certain speed. You need a certain speed in network forming and graphic care ability on the computers to make IT work.

And IT IT was a choppy. And then the other problem was to get to get a real time collaboration system to work. People, I have been online at the same time.

Yes, right. So you you and I work elaborating. We will be on one of the same time and we might be a totally different time zones.

And you know like it's just so it's hard to get critical mass for a network fact yeah if you have to be online at the same time where as know things like email worked, if you regardless when you're online, you know so cala, Chris and so yeah like collage was I A good idea? Just wasn't wasn't quite clicking. And then I just kind of became clearer to me and a few the other folks I work with there at the time.

That is just like, okay, something else is gona pop here and it's going to pop hard and it's going to be something involving like this. You know, the web go for ways like this confluence of basically new thinking of of user interfaces is going to take place. And then and then, by the way, it's basically two, two big things, the two big things that sort we insisted on the two big leaves.

As one is we're just going to assume that everybody has a graphical computer. We're just going to assume that everybody has like windows or a mac um or a unit for station we're not going to support. Not dose right and and all systems up to do that point. You including by the way, early you know the first web brows er the first where browser was a tex tex base browser. The team was was a browser that actually was the textbook er that ran on the next cube, of which there were may be five thousand in the world at that point.

So because that was like one of the most graphical machines ever.

but he had this problem, have this problem, he had the problem. So first, the problem of, just like there was no graphical content, there was no graphical, just the assumption was to be text based. And then the other the other problem, we just assume that the internet was going to be fast.

And that was a, again, if her radical assumption, and that was a horrendous assumption. The time is, at the time the net was really slow. Most people very slow connections. And so now the the experience a lot of people had, the first time they use mosaic, even even on the bright bank connection.

The first time editors, you would literally watch the page load line by line, and then you would watch the images load lined by line, right? And so but IT was a horrell al idea at that point to say, no, we're just going to assume everybodys on a graphical interface and we're going assume that everybody's on a bath bb bank connection and we're just not gna compromise. We're going to build the correct use interface for that new world on those two fronts. And we're not going to compromise to try to be backer compatible with the old text base U S. Or with the old nearby bank .

connections in a way that you were a university and without company, no need to sell anything in the beginning. So IT was like, bad enough. Yeah, in my computer.

my computer, because I worked IBM, and then I worked at essay. And we handle this money for the government at that point. My computer was an sri cell on graphics at the time, uh, company, the leading unique computer company at the time of amazing company.

But know they made these work stations in. The work stations cost thousand dollars in in one thousand nine hundred eighty two dollars, just like a hundred and one thousand today. And but you know, my computer was one of those and so and on a fast connection.

And so i'm just like, look, i'm just going to build IT for that. And then my college built at versions for windows and mac. But like we're just not gonna compromise for the old hardware everybody else is on were just going to assume that in the future everybody gets something like this.

Yeah and then yeah is your point like we were run on federal research money, so we had no commercial we had no commercial incident. If we had no reason to go for a large numbers of users are to make money or whatever at at the time. So so we just basically again, and the hersey we designed for the future.

And then there was a bit a little bit of glimmer. I wouldn't say I was confident on this, but I had a little of a glimmer of the time. IT was like, look, if we designed for, if we designed for broadband, like the if, if, if the compelling enough to interface, that will actually cause .

broadband to happen aggressive.

right? This is a my my favorite pilsbury. Nicholas has a very called ypersele, which is the idea of a of willing and idea. And your existence is just like proposing that is pulling in the future forward.

And is this and any idea basic was, if people could just see what was possible with a modern, a university on a modern broadband network we then built, if they could just see that with music, they would be like, wow, I need that. And then they would Price IT. And they be like, all my god, I can't afford that. But then they would say, well, I need a version of that that I can afford. And then then that would be a motivation for the phone companies to start off for broadband and for the know, for the PC, for the pcs to start to get built in internet activity and for people upgrade from dos to windows and and and all these other things that that that followed.

And so I said, said I wasn't confident about that, but I had a glimmer of IT because I was like, look like if if you could get through this, not all, and if you could get the world of their side where everybody has a guy and everybody has broadband, then dan is just very clear that you you just you have all of these incredibly compelling things that you can do that are impossible otherwise. And so I was kind of a hard shove in that direction. And then the other, the other, I would say big breakthrough, or I was not breakthrough.

The other really important conceptual rule that we had of the time, which was which was out of consistent with the internet physical y of the time, was IT had to be an open platform. And specifically, IT had to be whatever IT was. IT had to be where anybody could create services and anybody could create content.

And so IT had to be very easy to do that. And so, and you remember in those days, I was sort of famous that you could implement a web server and four lines of a perl script, right, to do whatever you want IT. And so you could create a way page just by writing A G.

M. L. By hand. And then, by the way, people did. And there there were scaling issues with those foil to separate. That's a lot of the bigger .

the company started out that way. yes. And then that's one of the races. Why the sites always crashed is exactly but but the point was the point was to optimize for that was to optimize for the quality experience that optimize for the openness and the creativity that would follow. yeah.

And again, there was a leap there, right? And we got, remember, we ve got a lot of criticism at the time, which was, wow, you know, these a lot of computer science the time like, well, these guys are building the most inefficient computer systems ever been built. This thing is incredibly efficient. It's unopened mize. It's wasting network with where .

is they doing all this? Where the and one in coding like this is string.

You guys are craze. You're wasteful. And yeah, big environmental with your burning, you know, power causing pollution.

Yeah, these are all texas protocols. So one of the design principles was all protocols actually be text base. There were no bary protocols. Text base protocols are much less sufficient, much slower, but the enormous advantages, you can program a tex space protect by writing text and you can read IT by reading text or as if it's an a binary format. You're always dealing with an an intermediary system and is just harder to develop for and harder to understand, will counter .

to the the belief of the computer science world at the time. I mean, everything read on as someone and coating is that you have to do that.

Yeah, professor of that error who looked at this said they are doing IT wrong. One hundred person. They they're absolutely doing IT wrong because it's not optimistic much.

Your computer science at that point was about optimized ing care resources because that was all you had at that time. They had spent a decade figure out out how to do that. And we just decided we collected decided to just break that role. And again, and IT IT was not to break the role, just to break IT IT was because what was on the other side of break in that role was openness and creativity and powerful, and anybody can do anything.

And then inclusively, right? You didn't have to be a computer sciences networking expert to build a web server.

Yeah, that's right. And the experience people have know the killer. The killer are kind of version of this that ended up working really well. Was this idea of view source? yeah.

So there was this future built that we built in a mozart and was built in a brothers, which was, I forget exactly when I P popped up. You start the idea as if he was, you're looking, you're looking at a weave. You're looking at the render version of weapons.

But you can click on the source, and IT will show you the HTML source code for the page. And so any time you wanted to see how a web page had been created to accomplish something that you wanted to do, you could just look at IT. And then you made IT easy replicate yeah and again, that was like, that was not that was like, I pray there was no there was no view story for like netware protocols before .

that that was like, that was a new idea that created so many web design jobs. IT was crazy like, could never have come about like that little or a seemingly small thing was a massive thing.

Yeah, no, look, I meet people. I met people I know I met. I met somebody just the other day who literally, it's like that. It's like you.

They they first got, first got access to the browser and you know, high school or whatever in college and then they literally, literally the views thing and they like, oh, I can read dish shamali. And then they got a job as a web designer, yes. And then that paid their way through, you know whatever you know get to the career going to start their company.

And yeah so that was yeah economic impowering inclusively maximum a maxim inclusive ity you and look, you know technical visas could could do more, but like you did not have to be a text ical vist to get started and get going. And then IT gave you a very powerful motivation to learn more and a very easy way to learn more. yeah.

And so that that worked out really well. And the mosaic idea basically was, okay, pull of the stuff together. So bill, basically the unified visual interface and in mosaic, out of the gate actually supported all three of the systems that I described.

So we supported IT out of the gate, the at the web text form at the time. And then I go for. And then we we actually also supported FTP.

We supported, as he made to support for international news groups. So we sort of a single graphical user interface, you should rule them all. So we have support for all this.

And then you know the way obvious the one that took off. And then and then the other the other part of that for most equals that they make the web graphical. And so to transition IT from a text base, you know, kind of text prom dos of situation to be to be forever phh pages. And that was, of course, that was the thing that really just know what on fire.

Yeah, you famously invented the image stag of her recall.

So there was a big dispute. There was a big dispute early on. So there was a big dispute. So there there was opposition early on within the internet community. And I I want name names, but within the set of people who were in in the this kind of thing working on IT, um there was actually a lot of controversy around the idea of adding images. And there was there was a big argument, there actually multiple arguments to not add images.

And by the way, and not images means don't make a graphical right not bringing into the the guie world and and you know one argument was just efficiency, again, network optimization, use of resources and by the way, equality argument. Not everybody has a graphic work station. No, right? They would be unfair to them if there is what pages that they can view.

So that was part of the argument. You there were certainly a speed performance. You waste argument to IT. And then there was also there was also a cultural argument. And this was around the time the internet was starting to really open up. And you know that that kind of nevada I was mentioning where everybody is like C S degree holder, you know, is starting become a consumer thing, uh, really on. And there was a lot of anxiety around that.

And so there was an argument at the time that continental internet should remain only scientific, right? And if if you add features and capabilities like images and graphics, then you are encouraging the creation of sort of mass market content, right? And if you have mass market content.

that's going to draw more of the wrong kinds of users. A value argument.

which turns out that turns out that argument was correct. But but, but well, that's good. I was so that the people made that argument were correct based on their own press oppositions.

I I was I was on the other side of the argument and I was on I was on the other side of each, each of those arguments. But specifically on that argument is I I just always thought everybody should be able to use this. I, I was very much on the side of this is amazing.

Everybody on the planet should be on the internet. Everybody internet should be on the web. Everybody on the web should be graphical.

Like, yes, there should be content. All the internet is graphic. There should be all kinds of pictures and movies, animations and streaming and games. And yes, you should have all this, and everybody should be honored. We we should maximize this and that that may.

And again, herrera idea that that was that there were a lot of people at the time who were very important at the time who were very ancient about the and then and basically we we just so there was a big fight argument around that, and we weren't making progress on that. Then I just did because I control, control moc, at that point, I just did to fit a company. And I just declared IT.

And I created the image and people built up images.

And just, yeah, so I want what's the I want I want the factor argument just to to share a thoracic an action yeah.

you are king of the internet and then well, to tell us about, like, okay, how did you take off? When did the press recognize that? And then how did you become go from king of the internet to customer support for the entire internet?

That's the same thing. The same also the in the main blogger, maybe the first blog, depending on on how to score IT. So I was also the sort I was the front page for a while. So yeah so we started basically A A group of us at at in csa basically kind of went rogue in one thousand nine hundred and one.

And you started kind of working on this idea on the weekends and in particular my partner at the time, arba and myself, you know, we were the first two to kind work on this, and and just be a first full kind of acknowledged here arki. T the first, first, which was for unix, for stations. And then we we had other colleagues who know, who are very, very famous in the history, who develop windows version and developed the mac version.

And and so we did developed for all three, three those platforms. But the first version was the unix version. Eric, can I built IT? I always, I always credit IT as I did the front end.

And then erick did all the hard work yeah yeah, yeah program where I guess you who's .

fantastics especially outstanding programmer is an outstanding programmer. And and so I did the U I. And eric did the rendering engine.

And so ir, eric, bill ather render ation is the core of IT, like the rendering is the thing that actually renders the page and has all the interface elements and makes the links work and display the image is and all this stuff. And and that was that was definitely the harder, the harder hf fit for a program standpoint. So I give eric I give eric like at least half a credit, if not more for that.

And then and then my role was was the front end. So it's kind of everything around the rendering engine. And so was the rest of the U.

I and then I was I did the networking protocols and all the know user, everything, user preferences and all the cash, you know, some of cashing and all the of the things to kind of make the rendering ation work. So as the two of us and I was really like the coral work was sort of a crash reneged project, kind of off books. And for me, I was like off books in two ways.

IT was not what I was supposed to be doing at work, but I was also, I was doing this, are going to class. This is what I almost got pick of the college. Oh yeah. So we sort of a crash course over the course of, if I guess, the fourth quarter of ninety two. And then, you know, we kind of work really hard over the holiday break, ninety two to kind of get IT working.

And then I I forget exact sequence, but we put out the first kind of acceptable version, which I think was the point version, like a round Christmas, there are a little bit after and ninety two. And then I think got to quote one point out, and kind of the spring of ninety three and yeah and basically IT went vertical basically out of the gate with the point nine version. So IT was basically a yeah so of a year of property work in ninety two.

And then I was sort of ninety three was the vertical takeoff and and ninety three was a very important year for me because I was my senior in college also. And so and I I was off a semester. I was a cycle by a semester for for reasons and then and so anyway, so so generated december ninety three were my that was my senior year in college.

And so this was like my chance to like, really do that. And then because I had just assume I was going to graduate and you know, leaving, get a job at eight of the year. So about a twp twelve month run there where where the thing really took off.

And then, yeah, look at was the tiger old. And then we had other colleagues who did the not the first web server, but the first kind of widely use that was a robust, scalable web server. And again, that also again gave us a lot of ability to move quickly because we actually control for that period, we controlled both the client and server.

Yeah, we can. We move very fast. yeah. So, yeah. So the two them came out. And then and then people started to figure this out and started get widely used among existing internet users.

And then and then IT was an immediate reason for people to get online at home. And IT was really the first reason for a lot of people to try to get on line at home. And so I also, I think about city's ed, the woman, and what we're called at the time, consumer I S P S.

And for people that upgrade their PC to be graphical and then have network, you have the network stack. And so ninety three was like this, upward, you know, the weight kind of upward hurricane. But again, IT IT was in this context of we're working for a research funded by the federal government. And so you know, we have we have no money, we have no revenue, we have no business model.

You know, if we get a product that say it's .

taken off like crazy and then we did, we put IT out as open source, but under what's called a hybrid license, we put in on under a hybrid license that says it's free for it's all free for academic and individual use and profit use. But if you want to use IT for commercial applications, you have to come talk to us. And then and then I had I had the mailbox for the incoming commercial queried.

And I remember when I hit like four hundred A B A basic companies, you know, by general councils and new procurement officers at big companies saying, you know, we wanted deploy this through our company, you know, who do we pay and we had no way to take the money. We didn't even have like a proceed. We don't have any this.

And then and then, very critically, we didn't have any support, right? So we don't have any customer support resources. And so we had the support email address and I also have that email box in my spare time between coating sessions. I would literally just like answer questions yeah and and but I was literally IT was IT was supposed to be tax support for mosaic, but IT turned into a tax support for the entire internet.

So I the difference we dream that was the internet for everybody a lot still exactly.

And so so IT really started to take then start to became a formal project. I have got got embraced um and and became a real project and got more resources. And then but we we were kind of just dying from the overhead and you know we needed more servers and we needed more people. And the whole thing is so we wrote I remember we wrote A A proposal to for a grant. We wanted an incremental grant from the national science vida IT was to staff a customer support desk so that we can support as we can hire.

like you know, people to support.

yeah. yes. So is my first trip to washington, D. C. Is is this grant we sent to down and and IT, and there is a science foundation. People did the credit.

They were fascinated to buy this whole thing, and they were glad that I was working. But now we in this grant, is the only place we had any sense of body at money. And we send this grant literally IT came back, denied.

You know, the national national science foundation is not in the business of, you know, funding customer support. One of the one of the sort of fun twice here is okay. you.

Like this giant commercial opportunity is staring you in the face. Like you literally have like inbound sales lead, like coming out your ears. Like why don't you go raise venture capable, start a company? yeah. And of course, the answer was because I had no idea .

that there was such a .

thing is that I literally.

ah you know what a tractor was yes.

thanks exactly. You know I had no conception whatsoever for no I no just no clue at the time that I was actually attractive thing that you do that and that was like something that like, you know, really, you know, rich, famous, fancy people, you know, I don't know, some people get like your people and so can value or something, but like people, and I think they were not doing that. And so no, and there was no venture capital champagne.

But at that point, and then there was exactly there was exactly one of a start up at that point called spyglass, which which is the name that will come up later in the story. But IT was not doing well. And so IT was like IT was more of a cautionary tale. And so we we basically just, yeah, we had the tiger by the tail. Then we just got held on, held for of your life.

kind of do that here. incredible. And then when did the kind of ended the kind of media and the press skip wind of IT?

So is a funny story. So, so there was a journal reporter name, jar hamburg.

Yes, I remember that sandberg, he was a funny guy. He was a great guy.

is a great guy. You know, this thirty years ago. So we're using, there was here for people who are .

still in perfectly good health. He was a good, great character yeah .

and he wasn't as a great rider, great reporter. And so he had sort of the tech beat of mostly journalist time. And he figured this out early and called me up the blue probably, and I don't know late. And if you were really, really like super early and he had the story wait to go, and he was intensely frustrated because he could not get his editors to run IT because because IT was not an important story.

Yeah course. I think everybody talking about it's just about a kids with bad grades on this internet thing .

that nobody cares about, never going to be a thing that's about to get quash squash by innocent a while and interaction al television and like that. I I say again to think about heracles aspect of this like this is this is why i'm so distrustful of experts like this. My first story for why I don't trust anybody with credentials and anything anymore.

So I remember another one, so I was working on, I remember working IT must have been IT was like december of ninety two or gender and ninety three. I am like working around the clock in my little office. I don't.

Csa, and you know this is that your banana champagne is also it's a little further south where I grew up, but it's still frozen thread most of the year, and the wind comes weeping over their own. My plane and everything is frozen, and you you're slip and fall every ten feet in the middle. Ter, and just this, this kind of crazy thing, and i'd be working the middle.

I know the restaurants are open and I I get ungry. And so I I walked down the one convenience store that was open twenty four hours, and I buy my whatever, my hot dog or my cookies and something to drink. And I were walking one night.

And there was this new magazine of the new stand called wired. And IT was wired issue number one? Yeah and I was like, all that's interesting no, it's it's a magazine about IT appears to be a magazine that's about things that i'm interested in which cept the time. And so I bought IT. I think her back to my office and I read IT covered to cover and they did not have the work.

internet and IT once and .

I was like, okay, you know, I was like, okay, like, I guess I don't you know, I guess I guess I know I don't count. We don't count this all thing doesn't count. You know, these are the experts, like they have a magazine, right? You this yeah these are the pros and like working on is clearly not important enough to maraven magazine.

And so I was just like, okay, I guess we're just going to keep working everything, but I know it's sort of like this constant message from the media, which is like, this is not important, this is not important. This is not important. Anyway, so Jerry had this whole story is ready to go and and he could not get his editors to run IT. And then later in ninety three.

john markoff, for the new ork times, fired to report legenda.

a legende legendary, you know, tech rod ter, going back quite a bit of so very active, but at the time he was like a veteran and very well respected in the industry, and rode a budget of books and so forth. And so he wrote a story for the year time. And so the good news is he wrote a story, the bad IT IT featured my boss, and my boss is boss good.

And I think they do with the problem, could have you work on something entirely else.

But my boss at the time to you know he was aware and you know he like he didn't vigorous ly oppose us and then he supported us and ultimately sort of adopted as a project. And so he he kind of is this way and do IT, but he was very supportive. And then, but my boss is, boss was the director of S.

S. A at the time. And look, this is one of those things I like. I owe these guys a tremendous amount because they created this environment that I was able to do my my work. And I would be here today, if not for them.

But you know, you know, I kind of, I kind of a little bit of, and if you relationship with my boss to start with, and then I had never met my boss's boss, right? And there was no reason way to meet my boss is boss. Because I like an undergraduate, like staff member, like you know he's a bit like a huge he's like a huge important researcher, extra physicists and you know directing this supercomputing center or so. Yet no reason to meet me, but know the story shows of the new year times, that is, smiling photos of the two of them and not, you know, iran. Me and I am like, oh, okay, I see how this works .

and how do you feel at the time? Because I know how you would feel now that that happens fit. Like how do you feel then?

IT was just a little bit, don't know, is a little bit and I was a little bit annoying, but I was also a little bit of like look at the new york times like I don't know you know I don't I guess they write about important people, right and these are important people because they running this thing and i'm not an important person because i'm only writing code yeah um and you know it's like the project is important ough where they write about the project but like the people actually writing the code and an important of the about and so it's like this kind of the same we actually to wire magazine, which is is that case a little bit of knowing but I guess that means I just need to go back to work because there's there's nothing else to be.

It's not like I can call you. You will never cross to me to call the new times complaint nobody. He have taken my call, you know and so he certainly not know who I was because IT certain wasn't the story so so no is just like like whatever but it's like this weird you know like the plato shadows in a cave wall thing like okay, there's there's all these things that people believe, right including up to the internet is like doom and is never going to be a thing and it's going to get swamped in and all these things and then they were we're just like, okay, no, we just have this stuff in front of us and I just plainly works and we believe in IT.

And I guess we're going to keep working on IT and maybe people will figure out what they want anyway. So jerseys er calls me up. Remember the day that still broken in your time? Jerk ember calls me up and he just absolutely livid and he he told me that he he, he got the morning paper and you know, this was like six months later or something after, know, he would have had the scoop, he would have had the the first story. I'm basically on all of the stuff and he he literally told me the story that he charged into his office that morning and slap, when your time done of the desk one a dramatic moment and said, you know, see, I told you so, you know, jen mark, on front page of the business section, I told you this was actually a story and just like, I yeah I guess I guess you are right.

Oh my god, that's so, Chris. And so so that's how again.

the heracles like that's how her radical IT was. IT was like actually IT was actually hard to get IT in print. And and I think the only reason you showed up in your time is jam.

Mark was such a leg, john. He he was just a legendary further as long as as career at that point. So ninety three was a namal year because IT was the take off year for the IT was the take off fear for the web, for the browser, for, for, for all this stuff, for mosaic. yeah. So IT was.

And then know the other part of IT was just the pingpong effect was very interesting, which was is basically was IT started out with like a few people with browsers than a few people with web servers, putting up little individual pieces of content, but then you got in this kind of feedback and loop back and forth kind of ping pong thing. We're basically every time there was a new compelling piece of content put online, there was a reason for people to start using the browser and and then every time more people started using the browser, there was additional assistance to put more, more content online, right? And so like I was like the readers, you needed writers and readers.

And so more writers meet more readers. More readers meet more writers. And so and this is what our partner and our trend refers to as the cold start problem, right? Is, is, is by default, if you have a situation like that where you're going to have a network, you know, at scale, it's gonna great, but like to actually get IT to scale actually really hard.

And most things that had need to have that kind of network effect. Never get past the called start problem. They strangle early because you know there's just not enough enough writers, which means there's none of readers there's not readers is not one of writers but .

this is for the openness completely was a winner for you yeah that's right.

And so what what happened from the very beginning with people all over the world started creating web servers and started putting up content. And and they if they used d csa music N, C S, A web server, which actually later became a apache.

So is actually still kind of a used today, you know, it's derivations much later? Or are they literally could write our web servers for the reasons we describe earlier? And so there was no content arriving online? Just to give people a sense of this, in early ninety three, IT was like one new website a day and and by the way, by one new website, I don't mean like one new I don't mean like a new ebay a day or something.

I mean like a new web page yeah, I remember is a big day. The first restaurant menu you came online was like a big, he was like an indian restaurant and like some second area city in in england, just decided to somebody put the menu online. And then IT was, remember the first web cam.

So the first, the first streaming video first web cam was a coffee pop. And IT was literally a coffee pot, because a guy had actually rigging up a camera, and early one cam at the time, camera at the time, with a coffee pot down the hall in some computer size department somewhere, so that he can see when the coffee pot was empty, go refill IT. And then he basically just, so just pure utility for him.

And then he put the coffee pot line. He was the first web camp. So we all SAT for like a week.

and just watch the coffee pop. Yeah, yeah. I put around the land .

when I can put them on the end. Yeah, exactly. You can see from home, right? So we all have to meal coffee. And so there was that. And anyway, so then one of the features built in the mosaic was what was called, was called the what's new page.

And that was another something that I had at the time, which was basically was sort of one of the first blogs, maybe the first one where I was every day. I was okay. I was literally, here are the new weapons es, for that day.

And IT was this peria doubling thing where IT started out being, here's the new web page for today, right? And then IT. And then IT was a big deal when IT started to be two a day, right? And then for a day, and then six a day and then eighty day. And then you know, by the end of the year, know I you know I couldn't couldn't ep up anymore.

The what's cool where page then .

we had of the what's school page. And the right of the what's school page was a good stuff, exactly the editorial function. So yes, that was, yeah, that was the key moment.

Get get into the windows in the versions were key moment because now they followed in. Those guys did a great job on those and that that really open things up. And then and again, this was leading up to, I guess, a well formally interconnected into the internet in september ninety three.

So this was leading up to that period. And they I remember an l will released their first building, I don't member, when they first built in a web brother. And yeah, I think that was yes, but you get a sense no IT to clear number one that they we're gna interference the internet.

They are you, they are going to bring the use of internet. And then IT IT seemed inevitable they would build in a web browser. So you start to get one mentor from that.

And then h, and then the N S F. Basically this, this coincided with the N S F handing off the N S F net to the commercial telecom companies. So this was, this was what happened, right? So all of this activity, like mosaic, was driving the network band with right on the backbone, crush the backbone.

The nsf was not in the business of providing commercial backline services. And so they did a hand off to the big three big topics at the time. And you know, get the hand off is part of that.

The the accept the policy was revolved um and so then uh commercial use, the internet became legal immediately after that happened. There was a really pivotal, pivotal moment in history which is there was a big computer company, the time you will remember called deck and they had a research lab, alto, called the deck western research lab. And there was a guy there, his name, i'm blanking on, but he, I was bright, read, if I member correctly, and he was, he was a computer science guy there he was into the stuff.

And there was a called science fiction book retail store, tiny little hole, the wall bookstore on our community. Al, and I think mountain view called future fantasy books. And IT was a called retailer, or of light of security, science fiction of fantasy novels.

And IT was, I had, you know, it's local clients. Tel, but I also had a lot of, especially japanese and and german tourists when they were in town, they would go by and they would buy all these fiction novels that they could not get back and their own countries. And so he had this international clients. And so this guy at back, remember, went and talk to the, you know, kind of very happy tailed old school, you know, owner of the future fanta bookstore, and said, no, you know, put your bookstore, you know, on the internet and the guys, like, I have no idea what any of those words meant.

Could you please explain each of them to me in sequence? And brian basic describe as like we're gonna will put you create a website for you will put a catalog online and we'll let people, you know, all these people, all these foreign buyers will be able to buy books from you, japan and germany, it'll able see the catalogue in the web and they can play, which was a new idea. And then then, you know, you can check to the books and your your business will grow so much and and the guys like, that's great.

He said, the promise that I don't actually own a computer and brians like, well, what do you have? And he said, what? I do have a fax machine.

And bryant said, let me get back to you. And so the dead guy is literally created the future fantasy website. And they they got, they figured out a digitize, his eventful. And they created the first commerce.

at least for both original amazon.

amazon and and then they set up a fact gateway where you you would order on the web. And then I would, I would fire off a fact message to this guy's the store and he would give the back and and then of course, in sequence, you can imagine I have a next so I me so step one, his business double overnight.

Yeah.

it's like the best thing that ever happened. And then of course, step two is just started amazon and then destroy, destroy, strode to try destroy and that's like you. But there was like a year there where he had like the best year of his life, yeah shaping books all over the world. And so that was that was, I think that made in the first commerce like at least the first like formally commerce e commerce thing. So that that was in that period.

Well, okay, so then you graduate. So what do you do?

Yeah so yeah so and I just don't look this was like this was I was an underground staff member. I was getting paid six dollars in twenty five hour cap. I think at three hours a week was was fine.

I have a great time. I know I just assumed as graduates the computer science degree, I go get a job. I did I don't aware what, but I figured do IT.

And again, that like IT was weird, was like a schizophrenic ic experience because like all of this stuff was is just like like all day long. I was just dealing with like this, just tremendous cash in coming stuff and single activity. But like there was no money in IT, there was no funding, there was no venture, there was no startups, there was no business, there was no nothing.

And then the media was telling me that, you know, primarily it's stupid. And the magazines, you know, all all this stuff and it's just and so again, I was sort of still I was sort of halfway between this like i'm seeing the future in front of me. But also I was like, the rest of the world is not taking this seriously.

And so maybe I just like, you know, I just like smoking my own exhaust and maybe this is just like all gonna get crush next year by amazon and it's just talking to be over. And like is is just like somewhere that like I said, it's just like the assumption was you left to stop behind when when you graduate. So I I had like the advance version of that of that can and room and so I was just like, well, no, I I guess I need to get a job.

I talk to the nca guys about staying there. They did off me a job to stay there, but kind of keep doing what I was doing. But I would have a, would have been a staff programme job and and you know, staying about a and I kind of wanted to get to, I want to get out of those.

I want to get to a coast. I was summer ambuLance as to which coast, but I think they want to get to a coast. And and so I decided I needed a job. And so I, I, I, one of the things I had control of us about page for the web browser and oh, I added to the about page for the right browser ah that everybody used the time I added saying, by the way, you know one of the primary authors of this browser is graduating and is available .

to be hired was a good class of high.

Please send job offers. Do you know this male box? Yeah and I got, you know, to my credit, I got about a dozen job offers and, uh, bunch of offers in the east coast, bunch officers in the west coast, and they ve got to offer from a little software company out in california.

I got two, basically two offers in in silicon valley that I I strictly considered. One was A A little soft company that I joined and then the other was I gotta to actually from sun at the time, which had a had a unit. They had a software unit of sun at the time, called first person, which was creating what became java. Later, let's change gas. IT was this project, and they, I almost went there, but they had a phantom stock option program.

That doesn't sound good.

I didn't know much. But like if you're applying the word phantom to stock option programme is not a good sign. Well, they they had a classic problem, which they had a software group that they wanted to give a centive two.

and they wanted to have hardware company where a small things, right.

And so, and they wanted this thing to be like a separate research thing, but they didn't want to spend IT off. They wanted to return control of IT. And so they were creating basically, oh, shaw, yeah shadow, a shadow shock from program.

And I was just like, I don't understand, sounds like a sm. So I turn that down. And then I I went to the sole of the company called the I T.

So yeah, so I I literally got a job. And yeah, then moved on, moved, moved out to california. And basic generated ninety four.

yeah. So basically I went to work. There is a little software company called the IT.

And there were sort of, there were a little basic contract research organization. Very smart I C. S. People in all to doing like works for the government, for for companies, kind of very leading edge stuff. And then they they just have to the credit they were on the internet idea really.

And and so no, they wanted to kind of create see if they could create like internet offer products, which is a very kind of new idea at the time. And so now there may be an offer. And they flew me out, I moved out, and IT was great. And I and I went to work there.

And, you know, I was like, okay, you all work going to make money, internet software r and know what happened was just like just kept having this kind of out of body experience though, which was just like and at that point, the internet started to get like serious media coverage and you know uh and if remember those days the book started to show up. And so before people have the internet, what happened was there were books about the internet. And this, this is where they are.

Rally publishing company became famous at the time. And so for is to have as if the pick of this ninety ninety five, you walls and walls of books about the internet in bookstores, and they be like guys to the internet, how to use the internet, how to write webpage, just how to do these things. And then they would often be like a floppy disk in the back in the book, which would have this often the T.

C P I P back your T C P I P stack for windows, all that.

yeah. And then they have this anchor that, you know, whatever, on the, on the desk. And so know this started to become a thing and people started to figure this out and the press started to take us seriously and they started to be more interesting content.

And so it's like, okay, the thing is going and i'm like, you know like I left most right behind and so know I didn't have the the email addresses more and so forth, but I I knew how much commercial demand there was and so so they did. But he was this like really schizophrenic thing was just like very unclear. And again, like I said, I had never heard of venture capital.

So I didn't really have a sense you to start a company and really know what to do. And then, you know, another great kind of stroke of luck in my life was, I GTA call from jim Clark, who know, cofounder of our company, nets, cape, you know, who is this legendary figure? And I won't do the full version of all this, because this gets into stuff is arty.

When people talk about a lot, the past he started plenty, plenty world document, but he had ban, a cofounder of of the founder of his company's silent graphics, which was one of the leading tech companies of the era. And then he got sideways with the CEO there. He decided to even start his second company.

But he had not list agreement with, know, all the great people that he had. You know, he couldn't hire the people. H, I, yes.

see, I was an amazing team that he had put to get amazing team.

But he had a formal, he had a formal agreement that he couldn't could hire them. So and he, and he had stock S H, I, with every, every smart person he knew. So know most of the people who we wanted to work with, he could not get. And so he he basically was like he was later, like knifing around for talent and A A guy who worked for him belfox too later during escape apparently mentioned a gym one day is like, you know you know, one of the guys who made this most browser is like, apparently he just like moved to solve him valley and he likes me about page of the browser he's available, know, maybe should go talk and so jim called me up and and we had breakfast, and which was a very traumatic experience for me, because I was not eating breakfast in those days. Get up really after breakfast.

Yeah, yeah. I remember those used to wake up much later.

Yeah, I was program for hours. And so I had to be up at seven in the morning, uh, to meet jim for breakfast at seven I O A palot 7a on sunday。 So I had to recollect ate my entire sleeping skills that week to try to make the meeting. And I was still burry when I got there, but good coffee.

And so anyway, so gm, I know again without belaboring and geri decided to start a company, but I was still this weird thing where in jim do all about the internet browser and I was still watch everything, but I was still the thing of like it's just not is not a it's just the overwhelming assumption in the industry was this is not a serious thing. This is not a real thing. This is a omen tary thing.

It's gonna away. The big companies are going to take over. This is not going to be the international, not going to be a commercial medium.

It's not going to happen. And so our first two business plans for our company actually were not this IT was we had a business plan. We our first this this plan was to do interactive software, interactive television.

So to build offered to replace the guy on the rowe's gates that I told about you, jim, had James company had been one of the main companies building systems. And so yeah, the inside on that. And so we were going to do that.

But then we sort of pressed out like, you know, we ort of model out, sort of how american TV was what I was going to caught. Now I was going to work. And we actually concluded IT wasn't going to work.

IT was I T. IT was too expensive and and the technology asn't ready. So we gave up on that idea. And then then plan number two was jim had a really good relationship with the CEO of nintendo, because S. H. I had done this deal to do the first three graphics trip for a game council, then intendo sixty four.

And so he went to visit the guy in in japan who ran intendo super genus guy yma UI 3。 We ran basically built modern intendo, as we know today, and basically a handy deal to a basically build, you know, the online service for the intendo gaming machines. And so to build basically what today you call x live or the playstation network. But to do that was so .

probably early for that idea.

How are you early? And no.

that was closer to IT was closer.

But like again, IT was modems. IT would have been all dial up. And so you would you would have been doing interactive gaming on dialog g modems with like fall fourteen tilities IT modems and with low lately.

And so IT and actually intendo actually had had an online service on their earlier devices in japan, and they actually had early online, intendo online or whatever they called that had like IT had like early e commerce and is a preparatory system. But I had like early e commerce. And I think that food delivery in the eighties.

And so there was like an early version of this, but I didn't quite take. And so this idea was to do the modern version of IT. But again, we model the whole thing out. I I like built all the spreadsheet and how all the motive banks you would needed, all this stuff. And we just figured out that IT IT couldn't quite work.

And so literally, we took a walk and I was like, I was like, I was like, a discouraging thing is it's like we have these two ideas that didn't pan out and it's like, you know, how should we like, you know, we still is are still anything to do together and know, remember, singing the walk is like, you know, you this this internet thing keeps going right like it's it's going and and think about what we had just experience there between jimi, which is like, okay, basic. The press was telling everybody and all the experts we're telling us was IT was either going to be the big companies were going to do interactive television or IT was going to be this no home, you know, sort of video game like service. IT was going to be that the ascension was really one of those. Those are going to replace the internet when this stuff got serious for consumers.

And and and we basically concluded that when dating, confirm the little kids can go play in your room, oh yeah.

yeah. If the magazines and I keep up the magazines because of the time, again, this is like getting started. And so the way people got their news was literally reading one of the three big news magazines are reading one of the three big newspapers like that's how you learn about things.

And that's for all the showed up. And if you just go back and look at the magazine cover from that era, it's basically all these big company CEO just pouring scorn on the internet and declaring that is a joke of toy. And the thing that they're going to come out where they're preparatory thing is going to be so much Better.

And and and so and so we literally had this moment where, you know, I was just like, well, if if we have proven to ourselves that interact TV is not going to work, and if we prove ourselves that you can build this based on these video game boxes and IT by process, is liming that kind of have the internet is the only one thing that works right? And it's like, and yes, IT has every issue that people complain about is slow, it's inefficient, is insecure. There's no business on IT.

There's no this and that the other and is hard to get online. And you know all this stuff you know there's all these reasons to believe IT wasn't going to work. But like I was literally we literally knocked out all the other ideas and said, okay, like this thing.

Is is IT has to be IT has to be the thing is only thing that works. And then, and you know, jim maza, total wison, these things knew all about this stuff. And so we set out and said, what if we did this? Like incredible critical idea.

And he had very horrell al as later, this is April twenty four. So still very, very, very far into this, but still very heretical, which is like, how about we make a build this sofer company to make international software? And like, and that was just like, wow, this seems, you know, this is like a risky, crazy idea.

Now, retrospect, I was like the most obvious idea all time at that moment. No, but that that's the true story of how we actually got to that idea. So, so we, anyway, we ended up basically commercializing you.

We need basic building the commercial version of everything that we had built at. And I just we got through the hard way. Yeah, IT was not the obvious idea.

Counter programing, conventional wisdom and media advice is still, still works. Now it's amazing.

It's incredible. I, I just, I have this concert. I live in this concert state of out of body, you know, kind of experience, amazement, where these people just show up on T, V, here and the papers or whatever, and there just, they have all these credentials, and they have all these degrees, they have all these initials are for their names, and they have got these incredible resumes and y've got all these publication credits, and they have got all this stuff and these government grants and like on like every possible credential. And harvard and M. I T like all this stuff and they just, they say shit and I just, and i'm just like, like, okay like maybe they're right, but like if they're wrong and the wrong like a lot of the time, like, okay, what consequences do they bear for being wrong and the answer is none at all.

zero. Yeah and they're just back on tomorrow.

on tomorrow with some new unit bullshit and and there's this great book. I often tell this great book because I felt that like, this is a professor who studies this exact topic and is this great book of is called expert political judgment. He did this comprehensive study of, he came out through political predictions.

So basically experts showing up and you know, column in the newspaper and on T, V, talking about, like is they're na be war here. What's going to happen? This really, whatever all these predictions and he he goes through and he basically basically the conclusion of IT is the sort of average well credential expert in the media on any topic involving sort of political global affairs is somewhat less is somewhat less than random likely to be correct. So so so so the right credential experts is score like forty percent and a monkey flinging you shit at the dark board .

is like fifty percent right market.

And the big thing that he points out is there there is no there are no repercussions for being wrong there. There's no career damage. There's no economic damage, there's no nothing. And then he says the thing if they were, if they were being, if were being empathetically honest, the thing they would do is when the talking has on TV talking about something that would be a score board and that would show like their last twenty predictions. And then I would have like red Green, where they read wrong is because you be the only way to ever have a sense of where if you're talking to somebody who knows they're talking about and and that score board.

of course, never appears, never materials there.

You never, ever, ever, ever see IT. And he pointed that he wrote this book like twenty years ago. And like everybody read IT and they are like, that's right. And then everybody just completely nod IT and kept doing things the same as they're doing IT.

And so I just I had this like I had this experience where I just feel, I just feel like a complete like I I mean, you know, IT were out, but like I I still feel dumb IT is in the sense of, like I read all this stuff. I believe that all the time, IT IT caused me to be insecure about the thing that I was actually doing, that I saw was actually working. I knew I was working like, and I knew why I was working, and I knew why I would keep working. And even still, IT was just this wall wall of doubts capture ism that kept eating away me.

So yes, that this, we use that to our advantage. You know, many time, thanks that I I remember when when we made the coin base investment, I guess bitcoin, which was the the one clipt to a currency at the time, was, I don't know, was some number of hundreds of dollars. And everybody economists, everybody was writing that was a complete scam and total bullshit and never be worth anything.

And here IT is, I know what it's worth today, like sixty three, sixty four thousand now is something like that. And all we are you to do is just listen to the experts to do the opposite. And you make so much fun.

Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, it's amazing. But I it's hard. Like, no, I do you like, I feel like I should have this problem like, I now have like thirty years of evidence that this this is all the case and even it's just like I still have this problem and like, okay, the experts say it's still, I like a real effort of will know they don't actually know they are talking about, they don't actually have any creditability there in a system. The incentives are absolutely terrible.

Well, I I always fine like if somebody's super dismissive about something that's a great thing to study because it's almost surely not a dead zero, right? Like IT may not work, but there is no way this is bad. As there you know, say, if somebody says something is like a scor pi scheme or bullsh or at this, then that's almost always worth lacking into. So you start my escape with jim. IT was actually called music right at the time.

Music, yeah. So so we so, you know, again, I had graduated. We know the other people, the other are other colleagues. And I know I were you working either? They were the students of staff members.

They are everybody working under federal research funding on a specifically not commercial project, you know, which was open source, you know, there and so and you know, like I said, there was no, you know, there was no the university. There was no commercial anything of value, at least according what everybody thought of the time. And so we we started escape.

We we actually go out gym, and I actually flew back out to urbana in the middle, so credible snowstorm, and hired, you know, I think based all but one, I think of the original, most active members to to join us, escapees. That was the original, original thing. Most of them were able to move out to california and were core members of the followed nescafe.

And so then we put out of the company and then we named the mosaic. And and that was sort of the first issue that got us some trouble and say the reason we named mother was not because we planned to literally like offer mosaic as a product. We very specifically decided we were going to leave the source code behind.

He, you you wrote IT, like when you were skip in class, yes.

we knew I was not common IT. We knew IT was not commercial, great. We knew IT had all, you just IT just issues IT sue, performance issues that you know these things, you know all the issues.

And so we just know we had all these issues, and so we knew we needed to start from, we wanted to start from scratch and build kind of the correct commercial product, and we knew what we needed to do to do that. And so very, very decision ally did not bring the source code with us. But you know, all all the stand, H M, H T T P.

And all these standards were open to open standards. And they were all free to know people. And they are not very able to use them to do what what they wanted. So so we're like, okay, we have no like, we have no copyright issues here. You know we're not taking the code.

And then on the on the trademark side, you know there is a long history and sick value of companies that are sort of named after the projects that spd them, often out of a university setting or some other setting. And so there were two two famous examples, some, my microsystems at the time, which is huge, a huge successful company. The the name sun actually came from the project at stanford, which was stanford university network, S.

U. N. And so that was like the name of the company, was like an image to the stanford environment that those guys came out of.

And then oracle was the code name of the project that they are else had done for the government in the nineteen seventies, right? And so there was this, like, what I thought of the time was like a time on a tradition of, like you can basically use the, and you know, l ois does they don't have a commercial, you know, interesting this. And so what we will just do IT.

But in in retrospect, that was sort of the crack. We start to introduced a crack in the army from the very beginning by doing that. And then basically what happened was as as as I was leaving moving in california. Um uh the other people at anode started to figure out that there was actually they got access the commercial mailbox that had all the commercially about icenway request and so they start to get a sense that there might be money in IT. And so the the founders of this that the company spyglass I mentioned, which was like the one software company in champagne urbana, actually approached without me having any awareness that they approach the university of our administration.

And they basically struck a deal to license the mosaic are our code, to license the mosaic offer code, uh that we are written for commercial uh, sales and they they started offering a commercial product called fyles me know totally within rights of the university to do this and with its five to do this and that deal was great and and off they went but but then we we then announce nescafe and of course we were the team that had written on that code and then started to become you. By now, the process started take this seriously. So we start to become, you know, famous, well known.

And cork was this legend. And so we started to get all the press coverage. And so spyglass started to get really worried that we were going to snuff them and we were lap them with the products and oh uh spyglass in list of the administration of the university of linos to basically try to kill us.

Um and the form the form. The form of the murder attempt was to they they didn't suit and they didn't do us because they they didn't have a good claim because like we weren't actually violent in cape, right. And you know the trademark, you got to change the name so they didn't actually have like A A great legal case to see us. And so instead of suing us what they did instead, as they called by glass, any situation we were in where we were competing with spigelman for a sale, the the university annoy administrators will call the customer and tell them that they were going to do us.

Good lord. That's like a thing to do to a start of that's like the dirtiest thing you can do to a .

start of it's like a super ferial. You know you know it's like who wants to know any any big company doesn't you know already kind of you know worried about doing business to start to start with. And if they started literally about to get sued, like why why take the risk? And so our whole sales pipeline throws up.

And you know we're running on you. We're winning a venture capital. And like you know, I know and so like we don't have that you know in those that today didn't have that long of a long way.

So we needed a revenue. And and so this this became A, A big problem. And so we we can't got everybody together and talked about IT. And so we we decide i'm very proud of this decision.

We preemptively see the university of note on this case and we we see them for, you know, such interference of trade is there's a sort of laws that are not great laws to see on, but they work in this case, which is this thing called torture interference. You can can, you can in theory, in theory, it's illegal. It's like just graduated ously difference.

Somebody else's business try to unlock the people's contracts. It's not great law that doesn't often get in force, but like at least IT is on the books. And so we sudan, oi, the furious negotiation followed. We offered them at the time four million dollars worth of stock uh, in the company when the company IT was worse, I don't know.

twenty million or something. And those Youngsters IT eventually. So per ten billion. So do you can do that now?

yeah. So IT was, I was a little a billion plus some, depending on a lot of money. And they turn that down and instead they demanding cash.

And so and you can have read at that point that was starting to work. And so we raise money from kind of perkins and we had other investor interests. So we we and we had sales, you know, starting to come in. And so we we paid in the cash and did the settlement and and I got them off our backs. Yeah, that decision on their part yeah cost them at least a billion dollars in direct stock, plus all the downstream in for anthropy for me, plus plus all the downstream plants cities from jim Clark, plus all the other .

founding engineers in last, a few buildings.

Thank they lost anything at campus. Yeah, know that. I'm just to speculate. They lost probably three billion dollars in one thousand ninety dollars. Yeah, with that decision.

Now, again, this is why I gave IT a score up front like, you know, look like the the alternate universe, mark, with a different skills that would have you would have had a very different way of dealing with this. yeah. But like mark, as he actually existed on earth.

One like, I never met the university of, no, no administrators. Like I didn't I didn't know the president of the university. I'm like a round of underground, right and so like I did know the president university know I could have called him.

you know yeah if that's too although it's still they to own students inside with like somebody around on a check is is still a little on the evil side I would say.

yeah, I I thought I was really bad, really upset. I was really upset for a long time not to be totally on this time, still upset every, every subsequent administration. Every subsequent new administration at the university has attempted to reach out and repair the bridge. I have not returned the calls.

Yeah, I know you're a grad shoulder you in my next biggest grade holders. I know I really .

ly my important to me so yeah so yeah. And you know the Price point, but you brought up this israel key, which is like, look, there are a small number of universities in the world that and you'd put stanly stand for this category. And mt, and a bunch others, you know there's a number of them that really understand is that maybe stanfords great genius over the last fifty years as an institution is you understand that is actually really good if this kind of thing happens. Like if your students are even your faculty, you know go off and do something new and are successful in business and then the the money that you'll get back and for anthropy is going to be orders of magnitude higher than whatever technology licensing fee you can extract or whatever threat you. You can export money.

you can start people, whatever, whatever. The IT seems like you're giving a lot up by being open, but you know you're you're actually opening the whole world too. It's actually a great metaphor for life, which is, you know, if you've live in abundance, you will get abundance.

And if you live in scarcity, you'll screw yourself. And they think good that those universities are abundant, and it's good that you are abundant with the internet. And that's how we live in the world we are in today. So what an amazing the I often think about the alternate universe.

If you note, if you don't write more like if IT doesn't work, if you don't start nescafe like IT does seem like we would have hadn't like most systems are, many systems are property, right? Like the smart phones are. You know everybody pays attacks to download their APP from the APP store because apple and that is not open.

And you know, you know google is extremely powerful company because you know, if you want to search something, that's where you have to go. And so for them, these, you know is just set up amazing anomaly in the industry that the internet happened and that anybody could join and anybody could pull up a website. Anybody could build a great business.

You know, in fact, including google, including you know, some of the big tech today was all created because of the opponent of the internet. So thank you for that, and thank you for the conversation. What a good I got.

I I got to bring you like to bring IT. I got a great climate.

the whole thing, okay, climate.

So let, so let me just start with that. And glad you just want through what you just went through. I I totally agree. Look like this says a lot to do with the debate raging around eye right now, which is, you know, these big companies know the big companies in those days had every reason. You know, they had all these stories, by the way, a lot of the story the big companies told about the internet early on was is unsafe.

unsafe. And I was really .

some just that I was, you know, but I was literally going to be an there was an inhibit, took a long time for commerce to take off. In retrospect, relative fast, he could have taken off because people literally just were worried that their credit card was going to get stolen, like you you to get over that hump. And and there was shes this constant fear of like cybercrime and this and that and spam and all abuse, like all these things.

And so and so that the big companies always had like all these reasons why they needed to have total control, and you know, the government needed to protect them and they needed to have all these regulations and they needed to have IT. Just the world needed to be a world not of open systems like like internet IT needed be a world appropriator systems. And look, a lot of the way the world works today is preparatory systems.

You know the the banking system is not open, right? Know you just if the k decides to do banking, they do bank or whatever IT is if they don't want to let the money go through, they don't let the money go through. And so you know most most of the world, most economy is with these big companies for total control. And and so yeah, I I think it's A I want to go through that because I think it's it's a major miracle when you're able to actually get one of these open systems to work. And it's like and years later, years like, oh my god, I can't believe we almost have the much worse world where the big company is and everything. But IT is amazing how the pattern he's repeating and it's specially repeating again you know today what they are again, ironically and into your point, ironically, some of the companies that are living hardee's for regulatory capture and a cartel of government cartel status for A I or companies that exists today because the internet was open, and so they are engaged in a psc, particularly advanced form of photo cracks and mental gymnastic CS. 好的。

think the founders are gone, so I can taken over by the other people.

the blind, the future. Anyway, so so OK. So the climax can't resist because I just think this is so amazing given what happens.

okay. So then we settle with all the way we going away. We're shipping our products. We starting revenue is starting to work. This is around, I think know the time you joined us kind of during this period and and so and but we're competing.

We're competing with you, a bunch of other companies that are starting, you know, people figured out that this was actually the internet was going to be a thing. And so a bunch of other software companies got funded and started. And then this company is spyglass was still out there and spyglass was selling they were selling they were selling our own code against us. yes. Yeah, madam, yeah.

it's a lot of frustrating.

But you know again, they have a legal to do IT. But like it's a little frustrating and he was fine. You are competing with what ever is a little bit fine. And like Price, we're going on and back and going on and then the spyglass gets this call for microsoft and the microsoft guys called spyware and they're like, yeah, we want to uh, license a Spikes music so we can build in the windows. And the spigelman guy say, you know, yeah, that sounds great.

No, basically how much per, you know, how much poor copy are you gonna, you know, pay us for that? And microsoft don't understand, we going to pay you a flat fee, which is the same you which is the same, you know, the same thing that microsoft not really licence dos way back when. And so but microsoft said, you know, basically, really is my understanding of what microsoft was.

You know don't worry about IT like you're going to sell as an add on to windows. And you know so we'll have like microsoft, you music and then you still have my grass is and you can sell IT on on other opening systems are compete with us or whatever do everyone. And so they struck the deal.

I think I was like a million dollar one time payment. And the first I thought they had struck gold because they had a slight massive endorsed big to us because we think at the and then they were going to know, sort of, you know, the whole industry is onna benefit from this. And then they onna go sell lots of other versions of space music.

And then there was this press. Microsoft had the press conference where they originally announced internet flyer, the browser, which was splice mosaic, again, r code we labeled. And the the famous famous moment where the the microsoft guys on stage and and then they do the one more thing part and all, by the way, we're going to make IT free is a famous moment.

You know, the split I see yeah with his head in his hands in the front row of of the press conference, realizing that his business has just ended, he he sold out his entire business million dollars. So that was the end of spiral. So you know well that as well. Yeah happy now that i'm competitive and that .

I don't just thank you all for listings to the mark invention. We will tell the nescafe story, which is also a good story. But you know we if you reply in the comments you want to hear, will consider I want to but thank you again and we enjoyed that. We hope you.