Summary For several months now, I’ve been complaining on Twitter and a bunch of other places that, for as ubiquitous as Netflix streaming has become—I …

Summary Andy Rachleff was a co-founder of Benchmark, one of the most respected venture capital firms to this very day, and one of the biggest venture …

Summary Check out The Top Entrepreneurs Podcast here! Books recommended on this episode: Storming the Magic Kingdom Walt Disney Unconventional Success Say Everything The Wikipedia …

Summary The famous Google Chef, Charlie Ayers, remembers joining Google when it was about 50 employees, the company’s early growth, culture, and the unique role he played in …

Summary If you know the Napster story at all, then you know about the Shawn(Sean)s. Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker. But in my opinion, and …

Summary During the dot-com era in the late 90s, there were four different venture-backed startups (six, depending on how you count) that focused on the …

Summary Before Snapchat Stories, before YouTube, in the dialup era of the 90s, there were a select few who were experimenting with streaming video and …

Summary Gary Flake has been involved with search technology ever since he got turned on to this particular field in college. In this wide-ranging discussion, …

Summary You all know MG Siegler. From TechCrunch’s most famous blogger to GV’s most affable venture capitalist, he has a lot to say about Apple, …

Summary Elizabeth Osder is one of those digital media veterans who’s career has spanned the entire web era, from bringing the New York Times online …

Summary Joe Schober was the longest serving employee of America Online, working there as an engineer, and later chief architect, from 1992 until just a …

Summary Michael March was the founder of Internet Direct, the first commercial ISP in Arizona. Michael gives us a first-hand account of the independent ISP …

Summary Would it surprise you to learn that 1800Flowers was not only one of the first ecommerce pioneers but quite possibly, the first to be profitable …

Summary As most of you know, I’m busy writing a book that this podcast is partially source material for, and at the moment, I’m deep in …

Summary Sometimes you get to talk to your actual heroes. I’ve been reading Richard MacManus probably almost as long as he’s been writing on the web. …

Summary At the dawn of e-commerce, if Amazon.com staked a claim in books, and sites like CDNow staked a claim in music, then Reel.com should …

Summary If you’ll remember back to the chapter episode on the early search engines and Yahoo, I said that it’s hard to pin down exactly …

Summary Most of you know Chamath Palihapitiya as one of the most prominent and progressive venture capitalists working today. But before forming Social Capital, Chamath …

Summary Most of you will know Jason Calacanis from his many high profile endeavors such as his podcasts (especially This Week in Startups) his Launch …

Summary I missed it (I should really be keeping a calendar of these things) but Slate.com celebrated its 20th anniversary last month. If you’ll recall, …

Summary John Rossman helped transform Amazon.com’s business. After the dotcom bubble burst, Amazon delved into a new business line that allowed third parties to do …

Summary Jonathan Abrams was the founder of the first modern social networking site, Friendster. This is essentially the story of the birth of social media… the …

Summary If you’ll remember a few years ago I spoke with Rod Canion about how Compaq created the industry standard computer platform that finally supplanted …

Summary I originally wanted to talk to Mike Slade about Starwave, the innovative company that launched some major names onto the web, including ESPN.com, ABCNews.com, …

Summary We’ve spoken a lot on this show about Netscape and the “Browser Wars,” but there’s a key angle to this story that we haven’t …

Summary Joel Johnson has spent nearly his entire professional career, working in digital media. He went from being an anonymous online commenter to being an …

Summary Steve Sasson was the inventor of the world’s first digital camera. Because it’s hard to imagine modern life without digital photography, it’s maybe easy to …

Summary Jeff Wilkins was the co-founder and first CEO of CompuServe, perhaps the original consumer online service. Jeff recounts for us CompuServe’s founding in 1970, the …

Summary Special Note: We’re testing something new this week. You can read a full transcription of this episode here. Everyone’s favorite, friendly neighborhood Venture Capitalist, Hunter …

Summary Mark Selcow and Matt Glickman were the founders of BabyCenter.com. The story of BabyCenter is a combination of several themes we’ve discussed on this show: …

Summary Larry Kramer was the founder of MarketWatch.com. He’s also been the President and Publisher of USA Today and he’s currently interim CEO of TheStreet.com. …

Summary Marc Tarpenning, along with Martin Eberhard, was the cofounder of Tesla Motors back in 2003. But before that, Tarpenning and Eberhard were also the …

Summary Tom Rielly was the founder of PlanetOut, the largest LGBT website and community of the 1990s. Tom recounts the unique impact the web and …

Summary What more do I need to say? Joey and Carl are back for round two. You can visit the Suck archives here. Listen: Listen …

Summary I can’t be sure about this exactly, but I would hazard to say Rafat Ali is possibly patient zero when it comes to taking a blog …

Summary Matt Kursh was a part of the pre-web Silicon Valley frenzy for pen computing that we’ve spoken about several times on this show. Matt is …

Summary Carl Steadman and Joey Anuff were the founders of perhaps the most influential of the early web content sites, Suck.com. If you’re unfamiliar with Suck, …

Summary Rob Lord was the founder of the Internet Underground Music Archive all the way back in 1993. This would become the first website devoted …

Summary Most of you will know Chris Fralic as a partner in the VC firm First Round Capital, here in New York City. But Chris …

Summary I wanted to speak to Quentin Stafford-Fraser because he was involved in the first “web” cam. I say “web” in quotes because, it wasn’t …

Summary Paul Sagan has had a long and illustrious career, which includes: 1) stints working on the Full Service Network, that interactive tv initiative in Orlando …

Summary There’s a certain romance surrounding dorm room startups. From Microsoft, to Dell, to Facebook, there’s something about the audacity of building a company before …

Summary Dale Dougherty was the organizer of the world’s first ever web developers conference, the World Wide Web Wizards Workshop in July of 1993. This was …

Summary If you’ll remember in Episode 32, we explored the early digital media startups like Salon, Slate, Suck, Pathfinder, etc. One site that was mentioned, …

Summary I don’t think very many people, twenty years ago, would have imagined that maps, location technology and the like would prove to be so …

Summary Tom Hadfield was the founder of Soccernet, which is still the premiere soccer (football!) website in the world. But just as the title says, …

Summary: In the early 1990s, Brad Silverberg was one of the key champions of the Internet within Microsoft. As the first ever Senior Vice President …

Summary: One of the big trends of recent years in the tech space has been the rise of delivery startups like Instacart and Postmates and …

Summary: Martin Nisenholtz is a digital media pioneer. He founded perhaps the first digital marketing group at Olgilvy and Mather all the way back in …

Listen: Evan Kirstel is a 20 year veteran of the wireless, broadband, cloud and social space. He is also absolutely the number one person to …

Summary: Terry Jones was the founder and CEO of Travelocity. Perhaps the primary pioneer in the online travel space, Terry explains the unique challenges Travelocity …

Summary: Bruce Spector is another early web entrepreneur whose company would be acquired during the dotcom era. In this case, the company was WebCal and the …

Summary: There was a time, early on in the web era, where things were very much wide open. An entrepreneur could survey the scene and …

Summary: Glenn Fleishman is back to talk more about Amazon’s founding mythologies, the recent controversies surrounding Amazon’s work culture, and the effect the web revolution …

Summary: Most people agree that Yahoo the king of the dot-com-era search sites on the strength of its zany, friendly, ubiquitous brand. The woman responsible for …

Summary: How did we get from a place where people were completely skeptical of living their personal lives online to the “share everything” society we …

Summary: Steve Goldberg was the first hire for Microsoft’s Advertising division. He was present at the launch of such projects as MSNBC, Slate, Expedia and MSN, the portal. …

Summary: Avram Miller was the co-founder of Intel Capital, and during the 90s, racked up some of the greatest venture fund successes of all time, …

Summary: A conversation with Justin Frankel, creator of the Winamp application, which was arguably the software package responsible for popularizing the MP3. Listen: Listen Right …

Twenty years ago today, this email made the rounds among the dozens of engineers and researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS in Germany: Date: …

Summary: Owen Thomas is back on the show for another analysis episode, helping us establish the context for the dot-com era. You can listen to his previous …

Summary: Get ready for one of the most fascinating entrepreneurial stories we’ve covered thus far on the show. Chris Cooper was the founder of Quote.com, which, …

Summary: Today we’re going to go a bit backwards in our timeline, back to some of the issues we covered in our Chapter 5 episodes. …

Summary: So far in our project, we’ve mostly spoken to people who were involved in startups that went public in the dot com era. But …

Summary: Maggie Mahar is an award-winning journalist who has written for Money magazine, Institutional Investor, the New York Times, Bloomberg, and in the 1990s, covered the …

Summary: We continue our survey of the pioneering social/community sites by sitting down with David Bohnett, who, along with John Rezner, founded Geocities. David recounts how …

Summary: One of the biggest names of the dot-com era was TheGlobe.com. It had one of the most successful and storied IPO’s of its day, …

Summary: Nancy Evans and Candice Carpenter founded iVillage in the mid 1990s. iVillage was one of the first community-focused sites on the early web, and grew …

Summary: If you are a Californian, then you might know Steve Westly’s name very well. After all, in the mid 2000s, Westly was elected Controller …

Summary: As you know, we’ve been trying to cover from every angle, the innovations that ecommerce sites in general, and Amazon.com specifically, brought to the …

Summary: Robert Levitan has been involved in many pioneering tech companies. The two that I wanted to focus on were iVillage, one of the early …

Summary: Steve Kirsch is one of the most fascinating entrepreneurs we’ve been lucky enough to speak to on this show. Going back to the 1980s, …

Summary: W. Joseph Campbell is a Professor in the School of Communication at American University. He is the author of six nonfiction books, including Getting …

Summary: Michael Krupit first joined CDNow as the Chief Technology officer. He soon took over COO duties, and eventually rose to become CEO of the entire …

Summary: Gary Kremen is another early internet legend. Kremen was one of the first people to recognize the opportunity that the Internet presented in terms …

Summary: You may know Glenn Fleishman from a bunch of things. He has written for Wired, Fortune, Popular Science, The New York Times, and PCWorld, …

Summary: Shel Kaphan was the very first person hired by Jeff Bezos to launch Amazon.com. A lot of people consider Shel to be a co-founder …

Summary: Bob Davis was not only the founder of the search engine/web portal known as Lycos, he was also the CEO, first employee, and for …

Summary: Jane Slade joined Amazon.com’s nascent customer service team when it was a couple of people, some computers, and one phone line. Over the coming …

Summary: Ryan McIntyre, along with his fellow Stanford classmates (Graham Spencer, Joe Kraus, Mark Van Haren, Ben Lutch and Martin Reinfried) was one of the …

Summary: On HBO, the show Silicon Valley is about a young kid who comes up with a billion-dollar algorithm and attempts to build a company …

Summary: George Bell was the CEO of Excite.com, took that pioneering search engine public, and became the CEO of Excite@Home when he oversaw that major …

Summary: I was absolutely thrilled that Ben Slivka agreed to come on the podcast with us. Obviously, we’ve had plenty of oral histories relating to …

Summary: Halsey Minor is an absolutely legend when it comes to the online era. Along with names like Jerry Yang, Jeff Bezos, Pierre Omidyar and others, …

Summary: Younger listeners might know John Battelle as being one of the original forces behind the Web 2.0 movement, as the founder of the Web …

Summary: Joe McCambley is one of the more prominent names in modern digital marketing and advertising. He’s had major roles at Digitas, at AOL in …

  Summary: Owen Thomas is one of the most prominent voices in modern web media. He is currently the editor in chief of ReadWrite.com, but …

Summary: Soon after the founding of Wired Magazine, it was decided that Wired needed a major web presence. Andrew Anker was recruited to write a business …

Summary: Rob Glaser was, and is, the founder and CEO of Real Networks. If you were around in the 90s, you’ll remember Real Audio and …

Summary: Oliver Knowlton is another one of our Pathfinder.com alumni. He’s had a wide and varied career in media, from his role as the General …

Summary: Jan Brandt is a legend in the world of marketing. She singlehandedly led the famous AOL “carpet-bombing” campaign that put millions of AOL trial …

  Summary: Linda McCutcheon is another Pathfinder veteran. She came up through Time Inc. on the marketing side, so she was the one responsible for …

  Summary: Craig Bromberg has had a long and fascinating career at the intersection of media and technology. An early adopter of online technologies, Craig …

Summary: Today we have an interview with Dave Zinman, co-founder of FocaLink Media services, which, if you’ll recall, developed the first remote ad server. We …

Summary: Kevin O’Connor is the co-founder of the granddaddy of all Internet advertising companies, DoubleClick. Chances are, if you’ve seen a banner ad over the …

Summary: When you talk about Yahoo, most people know the names Jerry Yang and David Filo. But if you talk to people who were there …

  Summary This is a wide ranging and fascinating interview with John Danner. John was the co-founder of another of the major internet advertising pioneers, NetGravity. …

An Interview With Compaq Co-Founder and CEO Rod Canion This Sunday, AMC is premiering a new original series called Halt And Catch Fire. Set in …

Summary In this episode we continue our exploration into the roots Internet advertising. We’re speaking with Jason Strober, another Internet Advertising pioneer and co-founder of …

  Summary Hadi Partovi was one of the original 9 people on the Internet Explorer project. He left Microsoft in the late 90s to found …