This New Internet Thing, Chapter 29

Janet Jumps In

I wrote a book. The publication date is May 29, 2024 (if you’d rather not deal with Amazon, your bookstore can also order it from the distributor Ingram Spark, or print-on-demand if they have the equipment). You can read it for free here, although it’ll be in serial form. My fond hope is that you’ll find it so compelling that you just buy the book instead of waiting 8 months to see what happens. There will be a chapter each week, 33 in all.

In Chapter 28 (notes) things are finally coming together. Len’s had his interview at the Sand Hill Rd. VC firm, and he’s got a contracting gig helping a client of theirs: one of the world’s first “Internet Service Providers.” Cassie is having a good time working on the Palm Pilot (although it’s not called “Pilot” yet), and Janet is getting curious about this “Netscape” company. In this episode, she hears more about it from the weekly lunch at Gordon-Biersch.

The specter of Microsoft is hanging over everyone. It wasn’t until 1998 that they finally got their reckoning, but in 1995 they were still the big bully.

Reading in serial form has a long and honorable history. My cover artist sent me this “Read Like a Victorian” website. Enjoy.

================== Janet Jumps In ===============

It was winter 1995. At the weekly lunches at Gordon-Biersch, one of the guys, Vic, had joined Netscape. Janet really didn’t know him too well, although they’d spoken a few times at Xerox. Vic seemed like the reckless type, and in response to everyone’s questions, he just said, “It looks like a fun idea.”

Porter asked him if it was true that they all slept on the floor there. Vic didn’t exactly deny it, but he said those stories were exaggerated. Dan had gone to the University of Illinois where Andreesen and Bina were from, but those guys had barely been born then. The fact that they were from the NCSA, or National Center for Supercomputing Applications, certainly made sense, since “supercomputers” were Illinois’ big thing, going back to the days of the Illiac IV. They’d been on ARPANET almost since the beginning. But microcomputer apps? That didn’t seem to fit.

Janet asked Vic if they were doing Windows, and he said they were. She mentioned how she’d worked on the Windows port of Mosaic and even met Tim Berners-Lee! Vic was impressed.

“Well, you should come in and talk! We’re not using any Mosaic code, though. That’s an iron rule from the lawyers!”

She snapped her fingers in mock disappointment.

After lunch, Janet asked Dan what he thought about it.

“Netscape? I don’t know. I had a bad experience with startups, after Xerox. I’m not sure I can handle another one.”

“Yeah, me neither, and I’ve never even been in one!”

“You’d be in for a shock, I’m sure. Do you fancy having no life at all?”

Janet was silent at that.

* * *

Len was talking to Brad at the VC firm every week. Brad kept mentioning that they didn’t have a John Doerr there, so Len was filling in part of that role, helping them keep their companies on the straight and narrow path to a payout. Len finally asked him,

“So what is this superhuman person,‘John Doerr’ doing now?”

“You know this is a small community here, right? We all find out what everyone’s doing, sooner or later. John is backing Jim Clark’s new company, Netscape.”

“Really? They think they can make money off the Internet, other than by selling the hardware? When their software is free?”

Brad held his hands out, palms up. “Evidently. John’s a smart guy, so I wouldn’t put it past him.”

Len thought about that. It just didn’t add up. People seemed to be drawn to it like flies, yet there was no obvious way you could make money. Other than pornography, as Dan often reminded him. Dan was always telling him about his “friend” Stan, who’d been pursuing that avenue for years now.

That night at dinner, he told Janet about it. For a change, she wasn’t dismissive.

“Really? One of the guys I used to work with at Xerox just went there.”

“Oh, yeah? What does he think about it?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

“Maybe you should go interview there! Can’t hurt to look around, right?”

Walt seemed concerned. He was imagining being a bachelor again and never seeing her. But he didn’t want to say anything just yet. Silicon Valley people were always talking about moving around, he’d learned from hanging around with them. Most of the time it never came to anything.

A few days later, Janet got an email from Vic! He said he’d been talking to the guys on the Windows team, and a couple of them recognized her name from the Mosaic Windows port. He asked if she wanted to come by sometime and just “visit.” Not an actual interview yet; just a get-acquainted to see if she liked the place. How could she say No to that?

She heard from a couple of her old Apple friends, and they told her that Terry, someone else they knew, had gone to Netscape. Now it was getting to be a trend. She went over there about 5:15 one Thursday.

The receptionist had gone home, but after Janet stood there for a while, someone came by and she told him who she wanted. Vic came out and led her back to his desk. The building seemed to have been designed by someone who’d watched a lot of Star Trek; there was a horizontal red stripe in the middle of the beige walls, and one of the cubes had camouflage netting hanging down from the ceiling around it. Not everyone even had a cubicle; some folks were just in a big bullpen. Janet had a flashback to her dorm at college. Everyone seemed so young! How would she fit in here?

Vic took her on a tour of the building, which didn’t seem too out of the ordinary for Silicon Valley. Vending machines, common room, lots and lots of desks with stuffed toys, odd props, banners, and other decorations, but mostly just a lot of people working. Vic introduced her to the Windows team members, some of whom she remembered from her contributions to the Windows port. There were no big managers for her to meet, at least as far as she knew, which she was grateful for.

Fortunately, she remembered a few details from the Windows port of Mosaic, so she hesitantly mentioned them. This immediately struck a chord with the Windows guys; she could tell this was something they were intimately concerned with. They shook hands with her and went back to work.

Back at Vic’s desk, they sat and talked, and Vic showed her the new version of Netscape he was working on. He didn’t know much about what she was doing at 3Com, so she told him about all the network management stuff she was into. This didn’t interest him too much, but when she happened to mention some of the Windows API’s she had to deal with, his ears perked up. She asked him what the business prospects were for Netscape. He seemed to be restraining himself when he said, “Better than I could have expected! We’ve got businesses calling us constantly!”

“Really? For what?”

“As far as I can tell, they want to take site licenses, so they can give it to all their employees.”

Janet had never thought about this. It made sense, from what she knew about installing software on the 3Com internal network.

“Wow. Everyone says, ‘how can they make money when their software is free?’ “

Vic pointed to his temple. “It’s not free for everyone!”

Then he asked,

“So you used to be a big manager but you went back to coding?”

“Yeah, I went through the glass ceiling in the other direction!”

Vic laughed. “Excellent, excellent! How do you like it back down in the trenches?”

“Much better. Fewer asses to kiss, for one thing.”

This was the right thing to say, she realized. She said goodbye to Vic, not knowing what was going to happen next.

That night, Dad and Walt both got the sense that if she got an offer from them, she was going to take it, so there was no point in arguing with her.

Things happened pretty fast. The next day they invited her in for a regular round of interviews. She’d already met the Windows team, or most of it, and her friend Terry from Apple was one of the interviewers. They made it clear she was not going to be managing, at least not initially, but the fact that she knew how to function in that job was a big plus. They’d much rather have people who could write code become their managers, rather than bringing in some faceless droids from outside. Terry apparently helped convince everyone that she really did have the respect of the engineers at Apple, and Vic did the same for Xerox. It was a done deal! All they wanted to know was, “When can you start?”

She gave her notice at 3Com, and they were sorry to see her go, of course, but ten years was a pretty long time to be at one place. No one else from 3Com had gone to Netscape yet, but they’d certainly heard of it. She called Cassie.

“Hey, guess who’s going to a startup?”

“Not you! Which one?”

“Netscape! Maybe you’ve heard of it?”

“Heard of it? They’re the hottest thing around! Congratulations! What are you going to be doing there?”

“Oh, working on their Windows version, I think. Not managing, thank God.”

“Wow. I hear everyone there works 24x7.”

“Yeah, I told them I’m too old for that, plus I have a husband. They seemed OK with it. We’ll see. I think most of the time when someone’s there all night, they’re playing video games and goofing around anyway.”

Cassie said, “Well, anyway, I’m so happy for you, Janet! Remember me when you’re rich and retired!”

She laughed. “Right. Rich and retired. Or maybe just burned out.”

They talked some more about how Palm was doing, and their other friends. Cassie hadn’t heard about Len’s new job, so she was really interested in that.

* * *

Len and Brad huddled about NetsForAll. They both agreed that Charley would have to be replaced, one way or the other. Brad seemed to be leaning towards selling the company to one of the big telecoms, who were desperate to get into the Internet. Charley would probably quit after that in any case, if he even stayed through the acquisition.

Then Len told him the big news about Janet. Brad was pleased.

“Excellent! Now we have a window into what they’re doing.”

“Well, assuming she tells me anything. When she was on the Lisa project, she wouldn’t even say what the price was going to be.”

“Good employee. You’ll have to worm it out of her. I hear they’re doing a lot of business, amazingly enough.”

“Really?” Len asked. “I thought it was all free!”

“That’s what we want to find out. You work on that, Len!”

Len said he’d try.

* * *

Miriam’s husband, Patrick, was still down here in the Valley. He figured eventually Microsoft would move him up to Seattle, but for now, there was plenty to do here. One of the things he hoped he could do was to find out what was going on with the Internet. So far, the Redmond boys seemed to have their heads up their asses about it, as he kept telling Miriam. They had this “Microsoft Network,” which was their idea of a walled garden that they would control completely. The notion of a wild-and-wooly Internet with no rules was just anathema to them.

Miriam had never been too close to Matt’s friend Janet Saunders, but she was always hearing about her from Matt, and now she heard the news: Janet had gone to Netscape! There were no secrets in the Valley, really. She asked Patrick about it, and he was interested.

“Saunders? I remember that name from 3Com. She was a big manager, as I recall.”

“You think they’re making her the VP of Engineering or something?”

“Hmm. I doubt that. I’ll ask around.”

He tried calling her at work, but she claimed to be busy and said she’d call back. She never did, of course. Patrick tried once again to interest his contacts in Redmond in this Internet stuff. It was hard to tell if they were paying any attention or not. Windows 95 seemed to be all anyone ever talked about. He only heard about Bill Gates as someone you didn’t want to mess with if you could help it. Did Bill even know about the Internet? Not that he could tell.

* * *

At Netscape, Janet felt like she’d jumped into the rapids on the Merced River, where she and Walt had gone rafting once. Except in this case, she didn’t have a life jacket and there was no boat to pull her out. Everything was moving about ten times as fast as it had at 3Com or Apple. People were indeed working there late into the night, and while no one said anything explicit when she left at 8:00 pm, she was starting to feel that they noticed.

Contrary to her assumption, they were not goofing around and playing video games when they were there all night; they actually were working. Some of them really did sleep under their desks some of the time. There were no pep talks about how they were going to change the world, but that was because they didn’t need them. The constant stream of reporters from national publications were all the reminder they needed, plus they were young and naive.

“Dethroning Bill Gates” was not a crazy idea to them. They all believed that, once there was a browser out there that ran on all the world’s computers, there would be no more Microsoft and Apple monopolies. Now that was worth a few all-nighters, for sure.

Walt already wasn’t happy when she got home at 8:30, and the thought of staying even later didn’t thrill her. Maybe they’d make a lot of money and it would all be worth it, but how could you be sure? Len told them that companies usually went public only after a couple years of solid profitability, and Netscape wasn’t even profitable yet.

The Windows version had to work on Windows 95, of course, and that wasn’t out yet. Normally, Microsoft practically babied their outside developers, since having lots of applications was the whole reason PC’s owned the market. They issued the new Application Program Interfaces, or API’s, for any new release to all the developers as soon as they were ready. This wasn’t out of the goodness of Bill Gates’ heart, but so that when the new version came out the applications would all be available. It was just business.

Janet and the Windows team needed those API’s, especially the ones that let you dial up your Internet Service Provider. Without those, they could not have their browser working when Windows 95 came out. But somehow, Microsoft kept dragging their feet. They’d tell the managers at Netscape about it, but no one seemed to have any clue what was going on.

At home, she told Dad about this. He was perplexed, too. The next day at NetsForAll, he asked Charley, the CEO, about their relationship with Microsoft. Charley seemed to tense up, although he tried to hide it.

“We have visits from them once in a while, yes.”

Len thought this might be a sensitive topic. But hell, he’d brought it up, so might as well finish.

“Anything in particular they want from us? It doesn’t seem like we’d be on their radar screen, but what do I know? They’re into everything, I guess.”

Charley realized that Len had the ear of Brad, their VC, so he couldn’t just blow him off.

“The last time their guy, Patrick, was his name, I think, was asking me about Netscape.”

“Netscape! My daughter is working there now.”

Charley cracked a smile and relaxed a little. “Really! How does she like it?”

“I think they’re working her harder than she expected!”

“That’s what I hear, too. Anyhow, Patrick seemed concerned that I might give away the Netscape browser to our customers.”

“Give it away? Isn’t it free anyway?”

“For an individual, yes. He thought we might get a license to distribute it ourselves, so people wouldn’t have to download it from Netscape. I guess.”

“And were you going to do that?”

“Maybe. It was just something we’ve talked about now and then; no definite plans.”

Len pondered that. First Janet tells him Microsoft is dragging its feet on the APIs, and now this.

The next time he saw Brad, he told him all this. Brad seemed to get very thoughtful.

“Microsoft. The Big Gorilla. Everyone’s scared shitless of getting on Bill Gates’ bad side.”

“How much is he going to tell me?” Len thought. “I don’t want to overstep here.”

“That’s what my daughter and her friends always tell me. Staying out of Gates’ path is the only way to survive, they used to say.”

Brad said, “Yep. We always have to factor their reaction into any investment we make.”

“That’s probably enough for now” Len thought. He remembered that time during the War when he caught one of the suppliers of jeep repair parts faking some invoices. This crook tried to hint that Len’s life might get “difficult” if he made any trouble. On the other hand, Len might get lots of extra ration coupons for his family if he ignored it. He was careful not to say anything explicit.

“Who’s getting hurt?” the crook said. “All the parts work. No one’s getting killed over there.”

Len just told him to void the invoices and he wouldn’t say anything. He always wondered if he should have turned the guy in.