Clark came from the world of machines and hardware (Silicon Graphics) where development schedules were measured in years-even decades-and where “doing a startup” meant factories, manufacturing, inventory, shipping schedules and the like.īut Andreessen promised something comparatively simpler. The early 90s recession hit the valley hard. PC shipments even fell in 1991, for the first time one record.īut when Jim Clark recruited Marc Andreessen to “do something” on the web, the stage was set for a new kind of company, a new way of doing business.
Tech-based venture capital was somewhat moribund. The failure of the Newton and Go Corporation put an end to the latter the web would kill CD-ROMs we’re still waiting on AI… There had been brief fads (bubbles, even) for artificial intelligence tech, CD-ROM tech and especially pen-based computing. The 70s and 80s excitement of the PC era had long since passed. Indeed, the Valley was ready for a generational turnover.
“Everyone seemed rather morose, kind of looking at each other and asking why nothing exciting seemed to be happening in the Valley anymore,” Andreessen would later say. When Marc Andreessen first got to Silicon Valley in early 1994, it felt to him like the place was kind of dead. Quite simply, Netscape’s IPO was the event that signaled to Silicon Valley, to Sand Hill Road, to Wall Street, to Madison Avenue and to Main Street that something utterly new and transformative was on the scene. And the revolution that Netscape kicked off hasn’t stopped even 20 years later. It might seem a bit silly to say that a stock offering marks a key milestone in the history of technology, but that would be overlooking the shear, audacious, groundbreaking value of being first to this particular revolution. Most people give that title to an early ISP, PSINet (although, cases can be made for RSA Security, CMGI, Network Associates, or even America Online, which all predated Netscape’s IPO). Netscape was not the first Internet company, of course. But as the first Internet company that truly mattered, I chose to begin this project with Netscape because it was absolutely the harbinger of the modern technology revolution that has transformed all of our lives over the last 20 years. We all know that the Internet, and even the web, predated Netscape.
Regular listeners know, I began this project last year by collecting oral histories from a good chunk of the original Netscape engineering team (read a summary oral history here or listen to all the oral histories here). On August 9th, 1995, Netscape Communications Corporation went public. This Sunday, August 9th, marks the 20th anniversary of perhaps the seminal moment in modern tech history.
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