FOUNDERS AT WORK STORIES OF STARTUPS’ EARLY DAYS

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I N T E R V I E W S W I T H 37Signals Adobe Aliant Computer Apple T H E F O U N D E R S O F Hotmail HotorNot Hummer Winblad Lycos Founders at Work Stories of Startups’ Early Days ArsDigita Blogger.com Bloglines Craigslist Del.icio.us Excite Firefox Flickr Fog Creek Software Gmail Groove Networks J e s s i c a Marimba ONElist PayPal Research in Motion Six Apart Tickle TiVo TripAdvisor Viaweb WebTV Yahoo! L i v i n g s t o n 7141FM.qxd 12/18/06 11:06 AM Page i FOUNDERS AT WORK STORIES OF STARTUPS’ EARLY DAYS Jessica Livingston 7141FM.qxd 12/18/06 11:06 AM Page ii Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days Copyright © 2007 by Jessica Livingston Lead Editor: Jim Sumser Editorial Board: Steve Anglin, Ewan Buckingham, Gary Cornell, Jason Gilmore, Jonathan Gennick, Jonathan Hassell, James Huddleston, Chris Mills, Matthew Moodie, Dominic Shakeshaft, Jim Sumser, Matt Wade Project Manager: Elizabeth Seymour Copy Edit Manager: Nicole Flores Copy Editor: Damon Larson Assistant Production Director: Kari Brooks-Copony Compositor: Dina Quan Proofreader: Linda Seifert Cover Designer: Kurt Krames Manufacturing Director: Tom Debolski Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Livingston, Jessica Founders at work : stories of startups’ early days / Jessica Livingston p cm ISBN 1-59059-714-1 New business enterprises United States Case studies Electronic industries United States Case studies I Title HD62.5.L59 2007 658.1'1 dc22 2006101542 All rights reserved No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher Printed and bound in the United States of America Trademarked names may appear in this book Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, we use the names only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark Distributed to the book trade worldwide by Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., 233 Spring Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10013 Phone 1-800-SPRINGER, fax 201-348-4505, e-mail orders-ny@springer-sbm.com, or visit http://www.springeronline.com For information on translations, please contact Apress directly at 2560 Ninth Street, Suite 219, Berkeley, CA 94710 Phone 510-549-5930, fax 510-549-5939, e-mail info@apress.com, or visit http://www.apress.com The information in this book is distributed on an “as is” basis, without warranty Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author(s) nor Apress shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this work 7141FM.qxd 12/18/06 11:06 AM Page iii For Da and PG 7141FM.qxd 12/18/06 11:06 AM Page iv 7141FM.qxd 12/18/06 11:06 AM Page v Contents FOREWORD ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi INTRODUCTION xiii CHAPTER MAX LEVCHIN PayPal CHAPTER SABEER BHATIA Hotmail 17 CHAPTER STEVE WOZNIAK Apple Computer 31 CHAPTER JOE KRAUS Excite 61 CHAPTER DAN BRICKLIN Software Arts 73 CHAPTER MITCHELL KAPOR Lotus Development 89 CHAPTER RAY OZZIE Iris Associates, Groove Networks 103 CHAPTER EVAN WILLIAMS Pyra Labs (Blogger.com) 111 CHAPTER TIM BRADY Yahoo 127 CHAPTER 10 MIKE LAZARIDIS Research In Motion 141 CHAPTER 11 ARTHUR VAN HOFF Marimba 153 v 7141FM.qxd vi 12/18/06 11:06 AM Page vi Contents CHAPTER 12 PAUL BUCHHEIT Gmail 161 CHAPTER 13 STEVE PERLMAN WebTV 173 CHAPTER 14 MIKE RAMSAY TiVo 191 CHAPTER 15 PAUL GRAHAM Viaweb 205 CHAPTER 16 JOSHUA SCHACHTER del.icio.us 223 CHAPTER 17 MARK FLETCHER ONElist, Bloglines 233 CHAPTER 18 CRAIG NEWMARK craigslist 247 CHAPTER 19 CATERINA FAKE Flickr 257 CHAPTER 20 BREWSTER KAHLE WAIS, Internet Archive, Alexa Internet 265 CHAPTER 21 CHARLES GESCHKE Adobe Systems 281 CHAPTER 22 ANN WINBLAD Open Systems, Hummer Winblad 297 CHAPTER 23 DAVID HEINEMEIER HANSSON 37signals 309 CHAPTER 24 PHILIP GREENSPUN ArsDigita 317 CHAPTER 25 JOEL SPOLSKY Fog Creek Software 345 CHAPTER 26 STEPHEN KAUFER TripAdvisor 361 CHAPTER 27 JAMES HONG HOT or NOT 377 CHAPTER 28 JAMES CURRIER Tickle 387 CHAPTER 29 BLAKE ROSS Firefox 395 CHAPTER 30 MENA TROTT Six Apart 405 7141FM.qxd 12/18/06 11:06 AM Page vii Contents vii CHAPTER 31 BOB DAVIS Lycos 419 CHAPTER 32 RON GRUNER Alliant Computer Systems, Shareholder.com 427 INDEX 447 7141FM.qxd 12/18/06 11:06 AM Page viii 7141FM.qxd 12/18/06 11:06 AM Page ix Foreword Apparently sprinters reach their highest speed right out of the blocks, and spend the rest of the race slowing down The winners slow down the least It’s that way with most startups too The earliest phase is usually the most productive That’s when they have the really big ideas Imagine what Apple was like when 100% of its employees were either Steve Jobs or Steve Wozniak The striking thing about this phase is that it’s completely different from most people’s idea of what business is like If you looked in people’s heads (or stock photo collections) for images representing “business,” you’d get images of people dressed up in suits, groups sitting around conference tables looking serious, Powerpoint presentations, people producing thick reports for one another to read Early stage startups are the exact opposite of this And yet they’re probably the most productive part of the whole economy Why the disconnect? I think there’s a general principle at work here: the less energy people expend on performance, the more they expend on appearances to compensate More often than not the energy they expend on seeming impressive makes their actual performance worse A few years ago I read an article in which a car magazine modified the “sports” model of some production car to get the fastest possible standing quarter mile You know how they did it? They cut off all the crap the manufacturer had bolted onto the car to make it look fast Business is broken the same way that car was The effort that goes into looking productive is not merely wasted, but actually makes organizations less productive Suits, for example Suits not help people to think better I bet most executives at big companies their best thinking when they wake up on Sunday morning and go downstairs in their bathrobe to make a cup of coffee That’s when you have ideas Just imagine what a company would be like if people could think that well at work People in startups, at least some of the time (Half the time you’re in a panic because your servers are on fire, but the other half you’re thinking as deeply as most people only get to sitting alone on a Sunday morning.) ix 7141CH32.qxd 12/6/06 2:58 PM Page 443 Ron Gruner 443 We realized that we would have to adjust prices So we sat down and talked about it and, literally in a day, made the decision to completely restructure our product line and roll that out pretty quickly That’s the kind of thing that would have been difficult to in a more complex, let’s say, structure Livingston: You could be more flexible and move faster Gruner: Yes So we were able to compete with all these startups—almost all of which went out of business or were acquired We acquired two, for literally a penny on the dollar We acquired one firm that had well over $20 million of venture capital invested for a few hundred thousand dollars They just blew up Many of these guys got in the business not understanding shareholder communications Most importantly, not understanding it’s very much a “people” kind of business and that investor relations officers are typically “people” kind of people Their job is to communicate So coming in and selling technology— particularly technology as an unknown—was a very hard sell They had a hard time breaking into the market, whereas we had worked a company at a time We had had consultants early on that educated us, brought us in to companies, gave us credibility—kind of put their name on the line after they got to know us well CCBN did well because they were backed by Thomson Financial Their key founder, Jeff Parker, had great visibility in that community, and credibility But everybody else disappeared Livingston: Did you get acquisition offers? Gruner: We had a number At one point we had an acquisition offer by a dot- com whose stock price had gone up by a factor of seven in the prior months They gave us an offer at the time that was valued in the tens of millions of dollars This was a point where we had revenues of about $3 million It was denominated in stock We thought very seriously about it, but basically got cold feet—because at that point we had been doing it for years We just felt, if the stock collapses, we’ve lost it all Nine months later, that stock was worth $205 million! So if we had done the deal, had I been smart enough to negotiate the deal where we could have gotten out of the stock, it would have been a $200,000,000 kind of deal We had other deals that were a lot less, but we never saw anything that was the right fit, the right kind of liquidity, and the right kind of chemistry We didn’t want to sell the company to somebody that was going to disembowel it So that’s why, when we had an offer from NASDAQ—and we had a couple of offers from them; I can’t talk too specifically about it—we felt that it was the right strategy We’ve known the people for a long time; we’ve had marketing relationships with them; they’re going into corporate services and they’re very sincere about that They want to use Shareholder.com as the foundation for building their corporate services They’re keeping the name The valuation was right It all happened very quickly 7141CH32.qxd 444 12/6/06 2:58 PM Page 444 Founders at Work Livingston: The stars were aligned Gruner: Yeah, they were all aligned Somebody told me a long time ago that generally companies are bought, not sold And that’s what we did We didn’t hire an investment bank or anything like that to go off and sell us We just waited for the right opportunity Livingston: Is there anything you might have done differently with Shareholder.com? Gruner: Well, I think that bootstrapping the company on a quarter of a million dollars made us a little myopic We became so proud of that fact that we didn’t find the middle ground I think that in ’98, ’99, or 2000, we could have taken a million, $2 million of capital, at a very attractive valuation, and retained control and grown the company twice or three times as fast as we did Perhaps that was a mistake, not doing that I don’t know, because everything worked out fine And when you only have so much money, it makes decisions much easier Here’s an example: back when the whole Internet thing was getting started, I hired a computer consultant to come in and advise us about what our Internet infrastructure should be He was a well-credentialed, Microsoft-accredited engineer, etc He came in and said, “You need to buy x number of servers and this kind of software and all that, and it’s a quarter of a million dollars to it right.” We said we couldn’t even come close to doing that So I went down to Barnes & Noble, bought several books, including some of the Dummy series And we built our first Internet servers, which lasted us several years, on Gateway desktop computers, using Microsoft Access as our database system and using basically off-the-shelf server software We did that for $3 [thousand] or 4,000, and it worked great Livingston: Did having a background in technology give you an edge? I would think a lot of financial services companies at the time didn’t Gruner: Well, in financial services, that may be But we were kind of a differ- ent breed of cat in financial services We were a technology company providing great service to public companies So we were always viewed as a technologist kind of company, and many companies liked that Some didn’t like that so much But that was our niche That was our differentiation We understood technology better Livingston: Who did you learn from? Did you have any mentors? Gruner: I had several I tried to learn and listen to them The whole founding group at Data General were really smart people There were four founders there: Ed de Castro, who was the president, who was an investor in Shareholder.com, and who remains a friend after 35 years; Henry Burkhardt, who was the VP of software; Dick Sogge, the VP of engineering; Herb Richman in marketing They’re all really smart guys, and I learned a lot from watching and listening to them 7141CH32.qxd 12/6/06 2:58 PM Page 445 Ron Gruner 445 Because de Castro was a hardware engineer like I was, I would view him as my primary mentor during those years During the ’80s, like I said, we had a good board of directors Tom Perkins played a very key role I think I absorbed a lot of the wisdom from him by osmosis—just in board meetings, and how he conducted himself How he did a good job, I thought, of managing conflict and disagreements I have to say I’m surprised, though, by how public he’s let the internal HP board battle become Seems to me that it’s been very costly to HP Livingston: Was there ever a time at Shareholder.com when you wanted to quit? Gruner: No, not really I really enjoyed most every day I enjoyed driving into work, looked forward to it Every company has its pros and cons The nice aspect of Shareholder.com was that it was indeed a recurring revenue stream So we had almost no financial worries We could predict our quarterly revenues within a couple of percent the first day of the quarter The worries that we had came from the fact that we were basically in the news business When earnings season came out, we might be doing 50 earnings calls and webcasts and news releases on the same day Every one had to be done on time and perfectly, because an earnings release, for all intents and purposes, is a legal document So where we sweated was just managing that process It’s like running 50 television stations at the same time If you screwed up, it was very visible On rare occasions we did We might get one webcast mixed up with another company We’d fix it within or minutes, but it’s extremely embarrassing And, believe me, chief executives don’t like that at all I’d be the one to call up and apologize, and that was just part of the job Most people were very reasonable, and they would understand—things go wrong I would use the analogy of a cell phone (that was when cell phones were really getting hot) I’d say, “Look, we’ve all got cell phones or car phones Sometimes they just screw up and they go wrong And this is the same kind of stuff; this is pretty advanced technology and sometimes things go wrong.” But we did occasionally lose a client that was just irrational, saying, “My boss told me to fire you because you made this mistake.” We’d typically give them a credit for the whole thing, and we’d say, “If you ever want to come back, we’d love to have you back.” And many did Livingston: What advice would you give to someone who had never started a startup but was thinking about it? Gruner: I went to an executive conference several years ago in New York One of the most interesting sessions had about six chief executives, all of whom were very successful, and the moderator asked, “If you could describe in one word the key to success for your company, what would that word be?” Very few answered in one word Some of them said integrity, or communications, and things like that The last person to talk was Michael Dell, and he said one simple word: persistence 7141CH32.qxd 446 12/6/06 2:58 PM Page 446 Founders at Work I can relate to that Things never work out right the first time You’ve always got to it two or three times to get it right And things always go wrong So persistence is the key to success I had seen that in my career I had seen that in computer design projects I had seen that through my whole life And so that word is the best single advice I can give to entrepreneurs The key to success, if you had to sum it up in one word, is persistence The Alliant management team in 1985: (from left to right) Rich McAndrew, Craig Mundie, Ronald Gruner, John Clary, and David Micciche 7141Index.qxd 12/18/06 10:08 AM Page 447 Index Numbers and symbols 1984 recession, 144 37signals, 309–316 5K contest, 258 A Accel Partners, 101–102, 108 Accidental Empires, 64 Acorn, Al, 44 acquisition offers, 137, 215, 217–218 Adams, Tracy, 326 Adobe Acrobat, 293 Adobe Illustrator, 287 Adobe Systems, 281–296 Adobe Type Manager (ATM), 292 AdSense, 161–163, 171 advertising, 130, 131, 311 See also click-through; targeted advertising affirmative action, 298 aggregators See desktop-based aggregators, 234 @Home, 61 Alexa Internet, 274–277 Allen, Paul, 182, 198 Alliant Computer Systems, 427–446 Alsop, Stewart, 194 Altair computer, 33–34 Amazon, 277 Anderson, Eve, 326 Andreessen, Mark, 134 angel investors, 209, 213–216, 260 AOL, 132 Apple Computer, 31–58, 173, 186, 267, 268, 281, 285–286 Apple I, 38–42, 44–45 Apple II, 31, 42–43, 49, 50, 78, 89, 94, 185 Apple II user group, 89 Apple III, 51 arcade games, 32 Architext See Excite ARPANET, 32–33, 143, 176 ArsDigita, 317–344 ArsDigita Community System, 319, 345–346 Artix, 205 Asia Pacific Ventures, 182 AT&T, 422 Atari, 32, 44 authentication devices, author-publisher model, 77 autocomplete feature, 164 @Ventures, 419 Aweida, Jesse, 428 447 7141Index.qxd 448 12/18/06 10:08 AM Page 448 Index B Backpack, 309 Bartz, Carol, 307 Basecamp, 309–314 Basic, 39, 50 Bausch, Paul, 113 Bell, Gordon, 284–285 Belleville, Bob, 285–286 Berkowitz, Barak, 408–410 Berners-Lee, Tim, 267 Bertelsmann, 424 Bezos, Jeff, 277 Bhatia, Sabeer, 17–29 BigStep, 122 BillPoint, 15 BlackBerry, 141, 148–150 Blackwell, Trevor, 207 blog, 264 Blogger, 122, 167 Blogger Pro, 118, 122 Blogger.com, 114–118, 125 See also Pyra Labs (Blogger.com) blogging, 310 blogging software, 405 Bloglines, 233–246 See also ONElist and Bloglines blogs, 236 blue box, 33 Blue Moon event, 198 BMC Software, 153 bookmarking service, 223 Bowers, Ann, 46 Brady, Tim, 127–139 Brea, Cesar, 328 Breakout game, 32 Brentwood Venture Capital, 182 Bricklin, Dan, 73–74, 88, 90, 120–121 Brin, Sergey, 168, 171 Britain, 192 Broadvision, 322 Brody, Jeff, 182 Brooks, Fred, 338 Buchheit, Paul, 161–172 Buck’s beaming, Buckmaster, Jim, 247–248 Burkhardt, Henry, 444 Bushnell, Nolan, 32 business development, 179 business plan, 28, 129 Byers, Brooks, 429 Byte magazine, 176 C CADO computer, 300 camera phones, 262 cameras, 262 Campbell’s Soup, 435 Canada, 150–151 Canadian government, 261 Cantel (now Rogers), 146–147 Captain Crunch, 52 Caribou, 166 Carmen, Carl, 428 Carnegie Mellon University, 419 Cartravision, 32 Cash, Jim, 84 cassette tape interface, 52 Catapult Entertainment, 174, 175, 177 Caulfield, Frank, 429 CCBN, 442–443 Ceglowski, Maciej, 229–230 Chanial, Pierre, 397 Charles River Ventures, 65 chat/IM, 165 Checkbook program, 52 Chizen, Bruce, 295 CityDesk, 348, 349 Clark, Jim, 192–194 Classon, Jason, 258 click-through, 23 CMGI, 419 CMP, 119 Coit, Steve, 65 cold calling, 64 Cold War, 430 collaboration software, 103 collaborative bookmarking site, 223 collaborative filtering,275–276 7141Index.qxd 12/18/06 10:08 AM Page 449 Index 449 D Data General, 427 Data General Nova computer, 34–36 data interchange format, 91–92 Database Backed Web Sites, 321 Davis, Bob, 419–426 Davis, Marvin, 178–179 de Castro, Ed, 427, 444 DEC (Digital Equipment Company), 75 del.icio.us, 223–232 demo software, 208 Denton, Nick, 118 desktop publishing, 287 desktop-based aggregators, 234 development time, 162 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), 142 digital photography, 262 digital video recorder (DVR), 191, 203 DIRECTV, 199, 201 Doerr, John, 429 dog test, 390 Dollarshort, 405 Dorfman, Elsa, 320 Dotzler, Asa, 396 Dow Jones, 267–268 Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), 20–21 Draper, Tim, 20 Dunn, Bill, 278 During, John, 271 DVR See digital video recorder (DVR) dynamic RAM, 34–35 Dyson, Esther, 261 E early-stage companies302, 305 eBay, 1, 6, 247, 254 Edwards and Angell, 334–335 Egan, Fred, 213 Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), 89 email, 143 email access, 149–150 Emode, 387, 389 See also Tickle eMoneyMail, 11 Encyclopedia Britannica, 270 Find it faster at http://superindex.apress.com/ Color Math program, 52 Comdex (Computer Dealer Exposition), 303, 304 Comet, 411 competition, 68–69, 108–109, 263, 303 competitive products, 293 competitors, 25, 131–133, 170, 200, 202, 237 computer games, 50–51 computer networks, 143, 268 computer programs, 37–38 computer screen images, 178 computer trainers, 142 computerized typesetting, 79 computers, 35 consulting, 299 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), 199 Convergent Technologies, 192 conversation view, 165 Convex Computer, 439 corporations, 279–280 Costello, Eric, 258 “couch moment,” 66–67 Courtney, Dave, 198 craigslist, 247–255 creative services businesses, 311 Cringely, Bob, 64 Crisp, Peter, 429 crypto libraries, cryptography, CTSS (Compatible Time Sharing System), 80 Currier, James, 387–393 7141Index.qxd 450 12/18/06 10:08 AM Page 450 Index enterprise Blogger, 118 entrepreneurs, 306 entrepreneurship, 74, 303 Evans, Dave, 283 Excite, 61–72 Excite@home, 61 Expedia, 366 F Fake, Caterina, 257–264 FasFax Corporation, 75 Federal Reserve Bank, 298–299 Feynman, Carl, 275–276 Feynman, Richard, 266 Filo, David, 127 financial institutions, 11–12 financing, 4, 299–302 See also angel investors Firefox, 395–404 Firefox 1.0, 395 Firefox toolbar, 226 FirePower Systems, 17–18 flagging, 251–252 flash card program, 52 Fletcher, Mark, 233–246 Flickr, 257–264 floppy disk drive, 52, 55 Fog Creek Software, 345–360 FogBugz, 348–350 Forum for Women Entrepreneurs, 264 Founders Award, 169 Fourier transform, 178 Frankston, Bob, 73–88, 90, 91 fraud, 6–11 fraud investigators, fraud unit, Fregin, Doug, 141–151 Fried, Jason, 309 Fry’s stores, 199 full-text search companies, 133 Fuzzy See Mauldin, Michael (Fuzzy) Fylstra, Dan, 76, 83–84, 90 G Galbraith, David, 118 Game Neverending (Ludicorp), 257, 258 Gates, Bill, 292, 307 Gecko, 397 General Magic, 174, 189 General Motors, 141, 145–146 GeoURL, 223 Geschke, Charles, 281–296 GlaxoSmithKline, 106 Gmail, 161–172 Goldman, Phil, 178 Goodger, Ben, 397 Google, 27, 122–123, 161, 167–170 Google’s Founders Award, 168–169 Government Printing Office, 270 Graham, Paul, 205–222 Greenspun, Philip, 317–344 Groove Networks, 103–110 Gruner, Ron, 427–446 H hackers, 230 Hambrecht & Quist, 283–284, 429 Handler, Sheryl, 265 hard-disk drive, 196 hardware vs software designers, 21 Harris 2200, 79 Harvard Business School, 75–76 Heinemeier Hansson, David, 309, 313 Hembrecht, Bill, 283–284, 429 Hendricks, John, 202 Hewitt, Joe, 395, 402 Hewlett-Packard, 32 Hewlett-Packard 3000 minicomputer, 42 Highland Capital, 419 Hillis, Danny, 265, 278 Hoffman, Reid, 261 Homebrew Computer Club, 33 Hong, James, 377–386 7141Index.qxd 12/18/06 10:08 AM Page 451 Index 451 HOT or NOT, 377–386 Hotmail, 17–29, 135 Hourihan, Meg, 112, 119, 120 House of Representatives, 270 HP (Hewlett-Packard), 191–192 HP LaserJet printers, 289, 296 Human Resources, 391 Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, 297–298 Hyatt, Dave, 395, 397 I J Java Fund, 157 JavaScript, 164 JavaSoft, 17, 18–19 Jennings, Peter, 76, 90 JFC (Swing Java toolkit), 154 Jobs, Steve, 31, 40–42, 56, 307 Joel on Software, 345, 347 K Kahle, Brewster, 265–280 Kapor, Mitchell, 89–102 Kaufer, Stephen, 361–376 Kay, Alan, 186 Khosla, Vinod, 65 Kilobaud magazine, 176 Kleiner Perkins, 157, 428–429 Knoll, Tom and John, 290 KnowNow, 120 Komisar, Randy, 184 Koogle, Tim, 130 KPMG Peat Marwick, 267, 268 Kramlich, Dick, 193 Kraus, Joe, 61–72 Krueger, Mark, 183 L Lambert, Brian, 103 LaserJet printers See HP LaserJet printers LaserWriter, 285–286, 288 Laventhol & Horwath, 79 lawsuits, 85–86 See also patent infringement lawsuit; shareholder lawsuits Lazaridis, Mike, 141–151 Leak, Bruce, 173, 174, 178 legislation, 136 Levchin, Max, 1–16 Levi Strauss, 321 Lexitron, 80 licensing See partnerships and licensing licensing agreements, 201–202 Lim, Jing, 163 Limited Service System, 74 Find it faster at http://superindex.apress.com/ IBM, 89, 93–94, 289 IBM PC, 51, 94, 186 IDG, 65 IFC (Internet Foundation Class), 154 IGOR, 8–10 IM (Instant Messaging), 316 Imbach, Sarah, InfoWorld, 65 instant messenger application, 259 intellectual property issues, 21 interactive pager, 149 InterActiveCorp (IAC), 361 Internet Archive, 265, 274–275 Internet publishing, 269 Interpress, 283, 288 investor relationships, 14–15, 102 investors, 171 See also angel investors invitation-only signup, 167 Iris Associates, 103, 108, 110, 352–353 Joi Ito’s Neoteny, 405 Jolna, Stacey, 202 JotSpot, 61–72, 71 Jurvetson, Steve, 20 7141Index.qxd 452 12/18/06 10:08 AM Page 452 Index Linotype Corporation, 286 Linotype typeface library, 286 LiveJournal, 405, 410 Lobo, Donald, 129 Lotus 1-2-3, 82, 89, 94–95, 100 Lotus Development, 89–102, 109 Lotus Notes, 103, 352–353 Lotus Symphony, 103 Loud Thinking, 310 Ludicorp, 257, 258 Lycos, 419–426 M machine language, 38 Macintosh, 186 Macintosh office, 287 Macromedia, 293 Magellan, 70 MagicTV, 174 Mallett, Jeff, 131 management teams, 239, 305–306 Marimba, 153–160 Mark Perry, 193 marketing, 400 marketing budget, 311 Markkula, Mike, 44, 56 masterless synchronization, 105 math and science, 307 Mauldin, Michael (Fuzzy), 419, 426 Mawn-Mahlau, Sam, 334–335 Mayer, Steve, 32 McAndrew, Rich, 428 McNealy, Scott, 154 media, 237 media switch, 196 Meet Me system, 381 Memepool, 223 mentors, 304–305 Merholz, Peter, 115 Mesa programming language vs PostScript, 289 Metcalfe, Bob, 282 Michalski, Jerry, 115 microcomputer revolution, 192 microcomputers, 144 microprocessors, 33 Microsoft, 26–27, 108, 132, 187, 323, 358, 399 Microsoft Project, 310 Microsoft SharePoint vs ArsDigita Community System, 323 Minsky, Marvin, 266, 277 modem, 174 Moore, Ken, 103 Morgan Stanley, 225 Morris, Harry, 271, 272 Morris, Robert, 205 motto, 161, 169 Movable Type, 405–412 Moveover, 118 Mozilla Foundation, 395 MSNTV, 188 See also WebTV Multics project, 73 Mundie, Craig, 428 Muxway, 224 Myers-Briggs corporate personality test, 387 N NASDAQ, 443–444 National Computer Conference, 78 NEA, 193 Neopets, 258 Neoteny, 405, 410 NetDirectory, 70 Netscape, 69, 130, 131, 134 Netscape 1.0, 176 network attached storage (NAS), 168 networks See television networks New England Apple Tree, 89 Newmark, Craig, 247–255 NewsGator, 237 Nintendo video games, 174 nondisclosure agreements, 77 NTK (Need To Know) newsletter, 235 7141Index.qxd 12/18/06 10:08 AM Page 453 Index 453 O P Page, Larry, 171 Palka, Thomas, 361 Palm, 189 Palm Pilot, 2–3, Palmisano, Sam, 307 Parakey, 395–404 parallel processing technology, 428 parallel supercomputers, 427 partnerships and licensing, 424, 426 password generators, Patel, Amit, 170 patent infringement lawsuits, 159 patents, 178 Patey, Eric, 103 Payne, Jonathan, 154 Q QuickTime, 174 Find it faster at http://superindex.apress.com/ O’Keefe, Sean, 148 O’Reilly, 116 O’Reilly Emerging Tech Conference, 259 Odeo, 111 office space, 302 Ofoto, 263 Olsen, John, 156 ONElist, 237–238, 243–245 ONElist and Bloglines, 233–246 onfocus.com, 113 online project management tool, 309 online stores, 205, 222 online testing company, 387, 389, 393 Ooga Labs, 387 Open Source Applications Foundation, 89 Open Source Award, 309 open source projects, 400 open source software, 89 Open Systems, 297–308 Opera, 399 Ozzie, Jack, 103 Ozzie, Ray, 103–110 PayPal, 1–16 PC board, 40 PCs (personal computers) See personal computers (PCs) PDA development, 174 Peddle, Chuck, 43 Perkins, Tom, 429, 445 Perlman, Steve, 173–190 personal computers (PCs), 168, 300, 430 personal references, 306 Personal Software (a.k.a VisiCorp), 73, 76, 89–91 personnel decisions, 66–67 Phillips, 182, 199 Phoenix, 395 Phone Boy, 64 photographs, 259 Photoshop, 290 PLATO Notes, 103 podcasting company, 111 PointCast, 155 Polese, Kim, 155–156 pornography, 136 PostScript, 281, 287, 289 Powazek, Derek, 117 PR campaign, 21 President’s Award, 159 product development, 15, 154–155, 176 product distribution, 175 product naming, Professor Jackson, 80 program guide, 196, 198 programmable gate array, 175 programmers, 166, 324–325 project management, 310 Pryor, Michael, 345 public relations, 137–138 Pyra Labs (Blogger.com), 111–126 7141Index.qxd 454 12/18/06 10:08 AM Page 454 Index R Rackspace, 380 Rails (Ruby on Rails) See Ruby on Rails Rakuten, 215 Ramsay, Mike, 191–203 Red Hat, 341 Reese, John, 77 Regulation FD, 435–436, 442 reliability issues, 24 Replay, 200–201, 202 Request for Proposal bid, 300 Research In Motion, 141–151 Richman, Herb, 444 Rocketmail, 25, 135 Roizen, Heidi, 307 Rosen, Ben, 84, 96 Rosenfeld, Eric, 90 Ross, Blake, 395–404 Ruby on Rails, 309, 313–314, 359 Ryan, George, 301 Ryner, Brian, 396 S Sachs, Jonathan, 89, 95, 109 Saltzer, Jerry, 80 Sarbanes-Oxley, 442 scalability, 12 Schachter, Joshua, 223–232 Schwartz Communications, 215 Scott, Mike, 46 Scull, John, 287 search button deal, 69–71 search engine, 67 search feature, 162 search technology, 63 Season Pass, 200 second-system syndrome, 338 security, security company, 10 Sega video games, 174 Senate, 270 Sequoia, 300 Server Fund Drive, 119 servers, 21 Sevin Rosen, 96 sex category, 136 Seybold Conference, 292 SGI, 193 Shanny, Nick, 361 Shareholder Direct service, 442–443 shareholder lawsuits, 159 Shareholder.com, 427–446 Shellen, Jason, 122 Shugart floppy controller, 53–54 Shugart floppy disk drive, 53 Signal vs Noise, 310, 312 Simonyi, Charles, 282 Singh, Sanjeev, 163 Six Apart, 405–418 Smalltalk, 207 Smith, Hank, 56–57 Smith, Jack, 17, 135 social networking services vs Flickr, 260 Software Arts, 73–88, 92, software distribution, 155 software industry, 307 software package, software patents, 178 software products, 315 software startups, 307 software toolkit, 319 software vs hardware designers, 21 Sogge, Dick, 444 Sony, 179, 182–184, 199, 201 Sousan, Andre, 43 space-based technology, 147–148 Spencer, Graham, 61, 62, 71 Spolsky, Joel, 345–360 Spread Firefox site, 400 Squared Circle group, 262 Stanford, 134 Star workstation, 289 start-up like projects, 168 startup culture, 16 state machine, 53 Steinert, Langley, 361, 369 storage requirements, 163, 168 Strangeberry, 154, 155 7141Index.qxd 12/18/06 10:08 AM Page 455 Index 455 student accounting system, 300 Stuff, 113, 115 subscription-based software distribution, 158 synchronization algorithm, 103 T United States, 192 University of Waterloo, 143 UNIX, 195 Unix vs Windows, updating, 168 V Valentine, Don, 44, 57 van Hoff, Arthur, 153, 158 Varga, Jan, 397 variable names, 81 VC community, 128 Venrock, 429 venture capital, 43–44, 96, 100–102, 130, 203, 260, 261, 354–355, 407–408, 428–429 venture capitalists, 19, 21, 157, 238, 239, 305 Viaweb, 205–222 Viaweb Store, 205, 209–210 video games, 174, 176, 177 video terminal, 33 Vignette, 322–323 VisiCalc, 76–85, 88, 90, 92, 95 VisiCalc spreadsheet, 42 VisiCorp, 85–86, 90 VisiPlot, 89 VisiTrend, 89 Vox (formerly Comet), 405 W WAIS (Wide Area Information Servers), 265–280 Wall Street Journal, 270 Warnock, John, 281, 283, 284 Wayne, Ron, 47 web design shop, 309 web development, 112 web page, 259 web searching vs Gmail, 163–164 web service-based file system, 379 Find it faster at http://superindex.apress.com/ Ta-da List, 309 tagging, 261–262 tagline, 22 Tall, Spencer, 182 Tandem Computer, 429 targeted advertising, 22–23 Taylor, Bob, 281 technology, 158 Technomedia, 420 television networks, 202 television screens, 178 Terra Networks, 419 The Mythical Man-Month, 338 The Soul of a New Machine, 427 Thiel, Peter, 1–2, 13–14 Thinking Machines, 269–271 Thinking Machines team, 265–267 THQ, 175 Tickle, 387–394 Time Warp patent, 196 time zones, 313 Tintin, 348 Tiny Troll, 90–91 TiVo, 191–204 TiVo phone home, 197–198 trade shows, 303–304 travel sites, 365–366 Travels with Samantha, 318–319 Trellix, 121 TripAdvisor, 361–376 Trott, Ben, 405 Trott, Mena, 405–418 Trustic, 233 Tufte, Edward, 321 Type Pad hosted service, 405 TypePad, 410–411 U 7141Index.qxd 456 12/18/06 10:08 AM Page 456 Index web-based email (Hotmail), 17, 19, 24–25, 27–28 web-based email system, 161 web-based news aggegation service, 233, 246 web-based online store builder, 205, 222 web-based payment system, web-based software, 215 web-based startups, 252 WebCrawler, 71, 132 WebTV, 173–190 Wenger, Albert, 226 Wes, Ed, 252 Wetherell, Dave, 419 Wigginton, Randy, 52 Williams, Evan, 111–125, 412 Winblad, Ann, 297–308 Windows vs Unix, Winer, Dave, 379 wingedpig.com, 236 Wired, 154 wireless data technology, 142, 146–147 Wolfram, Stephen, 266 women-in-technology organizations, 264 word processing, 80 workspace, 259 World Wide Web, 176–177 Wozniak, Steve, 31–60 X X Windows, 206 X.com, 6–7 X9.9 standard, Xerox PARC, 281, 282, 294 XMethods, 377, 378 Y Y Combinator, 205 Yahoo, 22, 25, 127–140, 205, 423 Yahoo Store, 218 Yang, Geoff, 65, 194 Yang, Jerry, 127 Yannis, Don (Encyclopedia Britannica), 274 Young, Jim, 377 7141Index.qxd 12/18/06 10:08 AM Page 457 FIND IT FAST with the Apress SuperIndex 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http://superindex.apress.com ... 12/18/06 11:06 AM Page i FOUNDERS AT WORK STORIES OF STARTUPS’ EARLY DAYS Jessica Livingston 7141FM.qxd 12/18/06 11:06 AM Page ii Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days Copyright © 2007... Proofreader: Linda Seifert Cover Designer: Kurt Krames Manufacturing Director: Tom Debolski Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Livingston, Jessica Founders at work : stories of startups’. .. means of communication Every corporate dog in America will hang around with a Palm Pilot or some kind of a device What I wanted to was capitalize on that emergence of technology And then, of course,