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Netscape Time: The Making of the Billion-Dollar Start-Up That Took on Microsoft
From the cofounder of Netscape and the inspiration for Michael Lewis's bestselling The New, New Thing , comes a thrilling insider's account of the race to beat Microsoft for control of the Internet.
Netscape was a tiny start-up company that ultimately revolutionized business and communications for the entire world. Jim Clark tells the fascinating story of how he, Marc Andreessen, and a core group of programmers turned an esoteric computer program into a visionary new technology used by millions. Challenged from the start by competition, a seemingly bottomless pit of expenses, and a need for secrecy from the roving eye of Microsoft, Clark's programmers spent days at a stretch in front of their computer screens, rushing to produce their revolutionary Web browser under the enormous pressure of time. Clark vividly re-creates the tense, thrilling atmosphere of the start-up company in a nail-biting tale of drama and suspense. Netscape Time is also an inspiring manual for anyone who wishes to take advantage of the endless business possibilities of today's technology. Indeed, Clark, the only person ever to found three multibillion-dollar start-ups, is perhaps more qualified than any businessman today to show how it's done.
As a business book, as a reflection of our technology culture, and as a purely enjoyable read, Netscape Time is perhaps the most significant book about the rise of the Internet ever to be published.
Netscape was a tiny start-up company that ultimately revolutionized business and communications for the entire world. Jim Clark tells the fascinating story of how he, Marc Andreessen, and a core group of programmers turned an esoteric computer program into a visionary new technology used by millions. Challenged from the start by competition, a seemingly bottomless pit of expenses, and a need for secrecy from the roving eye of Microsoft, Clark's programmers spent days at a stretch in front of their computer screens, rushing to produce their revolutionary Web browser under the enormous pressure of time. Clark vividly re-creates the tense, thrilling atmosphere of the start-up company in a nail-biting tale of drama and suspense. Netscape Time is also an inspiring manual for anyone who wishes to take advantage of the endless business possibilities of today's technology. Indeed, Clark, the only person ever to found three multibillion-dollar start-ups, is perhaps more qualified than any businessman today to show how it's done.
As a business book, as a reflection of our technology culture, and as a purely enjoyable read, Netscape Time is perhaps the most significant book about the rise of the Internet ever to be published.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published June 23, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
March 3, 2015
The first time I read this book, it was 1999. Back when internet startups were all the rage, and any retard that started one made billions of dollars.
Seriously? Even Netscape? Yup. It was just a fucking browser. And at the time, it was the shittiest browser on the market. Internet Explorer was better than Netscape, for fuck's sake. Firefox was light-years ahead of Netscape, when it first came out.
But did Firefox make billions of dollars? Fuck no. Firefox was actually useful. Nothing useful ever makes money. Just ask Nicola Tesla. He'll tell ya all about useful things that he invented and never got a dime for.
Netscape was bullshit. The company didn't make anything that was worth one goddamn cent, but it made these motherfuckers billionaires. Because they knew how to con the public, and the stock market. That's all Netscape was, in the end. One big, billion dollar con.
But Jim Clark made this book fascinating. He made the Netscape con read like a Hollywood blockbuster. This guy knows how to take advantage of the next big thing. It's Jim Clark's wheelhouse. He started Silicon Graphics, he helped start Netscape, then he started WebMd.
I'm sure this jackass has started several more companies since. Because, why not? When you're a billionaire, making money becomes just a hobby. It doesn't even matter anymore if his companies are successful. It's just a game to him now.
It sickens me, really. I mean, I love this guy. Jim Clark is my fucking hero. But at the same time, I want to punch his stupid fucking face. Because he just can't lose. He couldn't lose if he tried. And it pisses me off so much.
Seriously? Even Netscape? Yup. It was just a fucking browser. And at the time, it was the shittiest browser on the market. Internet Explorer was better than Netscape, for fuck's sake. Firefox was light-years ahead of Netscape, when it first came out.
But did Firefox make billions of dollars? Fuck no. Firefox was actually useful. Nothing useful ever makes money. Just ask Nicola Tesla. He'll tell ya all about useful things that he invented and never got a dime for.
Netscape was bullshit. The company didn't make anything that was worth one goddamn cent, but it made these motherfuckers billionaires. Because they knew how to con the public, and the stock market. That's all Netscape was, in the end. One big, billion dollar con.
But Jim Clark made this book fascinating. He made the Netscape con read like a Hollywood blockbuster. This guy knows how to take advantage of the next big thing. It's Jim Clark's wheelhouse. He started Silicon Graphics, he helped start Netscape, then he started WebMd.
I'm sure this jackass has started several more companies since. Because, why not? When you're a billionaire, making money becomes just a hobby. It doesn't even matter anymore if his companies are successful. It's just a game to him now.
It sickens me, really. I mean, I love this guy. Jim Clark is my fucking hero. But at the same time, I want to punch his stupid fucking face. Because he just can't lose. He couldn't lose if he tried. And it pisses me off so much.
October 20, 2012
The stock market flotation of Netscape in the summer of 1995 made all the front pages and network news shows, alerting anyone who hadn’t been paying attention, to the dot com boom. As a promising startup, Netscape Communications had it all: based in Silicon Valley, a few months old, its assets the work of a bunch of geeks straight from college, expanding fast, not making a profit and giving away its product to ordinary consumers. And its product was a browser – whatever that was.
In 1995, if you thought all that didn’t add up to a good investment prospect, it just showed you didn’t ‘get it’: those in the know would explain that the internet worked under different rules and if you were too concerned about a company’s balance sheet, you were going to lose out. On its first day on the stock market, Netscape shares doubled in price, valuing the company at $2.2 billion.
Microsoft was distracted by the launch of its new operating system, Windows 95, and had to play catch up in the browser market. But Bill Gates was soon ready to take on Netscape with Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer browser. The tactics used to do so led to a protracted case against the company brought by the Department of Justice – the one in which Bill Gates’ sulky videotaped deposition cast him and Microsoft in a new and less glamorous light. Along with Gates' brilliance and unimaginable wealth, there was anger and stubbornness too.
Jim Clark invented Netscape Communications. He had already founded the successful Silicon Graphics company (SGI). He had fallen out with its CEO and been left, bitterly, on the sidelines, disagreeing about the direction the business should take.
Netscape was his revenge on fate: this time he would fund the company himself so nobody could second guess him. He would hitch his wagon to the emerging internet and would sign up Marc Andreessen and a bunch of his student friends, and have them reproduce the Mosiac browser they had just written at the University of Illinois.
Netscape Time is Clark’s own account of all this. If you have read Michael Lewis’ The New, New Thing, about his encounter with Clark a few years later, you may be disappointed. The narrator of Netscape Time isn’t quite the colourful, extravagant character painted by Lewis. Here, Clark appears reasonable to the point of dullness. And he is disappointingly discreet about those around him. Andreesen, in Clark’s account, is a techy genius and full of good sense. Some of his fellow programmers have eccentric haircuts and a love of pizza and remote controlled cars, but somehow they don’t exactly come to life, except in an utterly stereotypical way.
And there isn’t much detail about what Netscape Communications was trying to do, or why, ultimately, it failed – except to say that Microsoft’s sharp practices made fair competition almost impossible.
I read the book after enjoying Charles Ferguson’s account of dealing with Netscape for his software business Vermeer Technologies (in his High Stakes, No Prisoners, which I wrote about here.)
Ferguson gives a convincing account of why he believes Netscape blew its early advantage over Microsoft through a series of technical mistakes and failures in software architecture. He had the impression that Andreesen and his fellow programmers weren’t properly managed by the more experienced people Clark had brought from Silicon Graphics. And he thought that Netscape’s CEO, Jim Barksdale, had no real interest in the details of technology, only in business.
But Clark’s book doesn’t throw much light on any of this. The only technical detail Clark shares with his readers - repeatedly - is that the browser Andreessen made for Netscape was “ten times faster” than the original Mosaic browser. As to how it would integrate with other software or how Netscape was making money from it, we’re left to guess (although he does describe the financial side of his negotiations with some big telecoms companies). It’s hard to say whether Clark or his publisher decided that anything vaguely technical would put readers off, or whether that really wasn’t Clark’s interest either.
The most vivid episode, because it’s described with enough detail to draw you into the story, is Clark’s battle with the University of Illinois and Spyglass, the company to which the university had licenced Mosaic. Through some fancy legal footwork, involving the closure of offices at different times in different time zones, Clark orchestrated his way out of being sued by Spyglass for unauthorised use of the intellectual property behind Mosaic (even though he had carefully made Andreessen and his colleagues rewrite the code from scratch at Netscape).
The battle with Microsoft, ultimately more important for the fate of Netscape, is less well covered, partly because the Department of Justice case was still being heard at the time of writing. As in Ferguson’s book, the figure of Gates is a huge force, slightly off stage in both accounts, but still influencing events, even if only because others were wondering what he’d do next. As Clark puts it, “Microsoft’s huge advantage changes the shape of the industry itself, in the way the gravitational pull of some huge celestial bodies actually warp space and time.”
Clark makes a good intellectual case for the breakup of Microsoft, which was being seriously discussed as part of the DoJ case. It never happened, but what did – just as the book was being finished, I’d guess – was the sale of Netscape to America Online in November 1998. Clark optimistically describes Netscape as now being a “portal company”, through its Netcenter. But unfortunately, no other software from Netscape ever matched the firework, both financially and technically, that its browser had been.
In the New York Times report of Netscape’s IPO, one can see just how much we now take for granted was still new: in August 1995, the Times still feels it necessary to refer to “the global computing web known as the Internet.” There was much important stuff that Clark was prescient about: he put the internet and business together to form a vision of a “revolutionary communication medium to grease the skids of consumerism and commerce”. He saw potential that others hadn’t yet recognised and acted upon it, with his own money.
Both Clark and Ferguson’s stories end on a downbeat note: they are both richer – much richer in the case of Clark – but their creations, software companies both, have failed to grow up as independent businesses (Ferguson’s was sold to Microsoft). But although we now know that Microsoft wasn’t broken up, the pessimism Clark and Ferguson feel about its inescapable dominance doesn’t hold any more. Apple, pretty much written off in both books, is resurgent, with a larger market cap than Microsoft (try telling that to anyone in 1998). And other internet businesses, notably Google, have shown that Microsoft can no longer exert the kind of “gravitational pull” that Clark describes.
Netscape did something big, pointing the way to our future, thanks to Clark. It was a firework worth building - however quickly it burnt - and worth remembering.
Here is a good, independent Netscape timeline.
In 1995, if you thought all that didn’t add up to a good investment prospect, it just showed you didn’t ‘get it’: those in the know would explain that the internet worked under different rules and if you were too concerned about a company’s balance sheet, you were going to lose out. On its first day on the stock market, Netscape shares doubled in price, valuing the company at $2.2 billion.
Microsoft was distracted by the launch of its new operating system, Windows 95, and had to play catch up in the browser market. But Bill Gates was soon ready to take on Netscape with Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer browser. The tactics used to do so led to a protracted case against the company brought by the Department of Justice – the one in which Bill Gates’ sulky videotaped deposition cast him and Microsoft in a new and less glamorous light. Along with Gates' brilliance and unimaginable wealth, there was anger and stubbornness too.
Jim Clark invented Netscape Communications. He had already founded the successful Silicon Graphics company (SGI). He had fallen out with its CEO and been left, bitterly, on the sidelines, disagreeing about the direction the business should take.
Netscape was his revenge on fate: this time he would fund the company himself so nobody could second guess him. He would hitch his wagon to the emerging internet and would sign up Marc Andreessen and a bunch of his student friends, and have them reproduce the Mosiac browser they had just written at the University of Illinois.
Netscape Time is Clark’s own account of all this. If you have read Michael Lewis’ The New, New Thing, about his encounter with Clark a few years later, you may be disappointed. The narrator of Netscape Time isn’t quite the colourful, extravagant character painted by Lewis. Here, Clark appears reasonable to the point of dullness. And he is disappointingly discreet about those around him. Andreesen, in Clark’s account, is a techy genius and full of good sense. Some of his fellow programmers have eccentric haircuts and a love of pizza and remote controlled cars, but somehow they don’t exactly come to life, except in an utterly stereotypical way.
And there isn’t much detail about what Netscape Communications was trying to do, or why, ultimately, it failed – except to say that Microsoft’s sharp practices made fair competition almost impossible.
I read the book after enjoying Charles Ferguson’s account of dealing with Netscape for his software business Vermeer Technologies (in his High Stakes, No Prisoners, which I wrote about here.)
Ferguson gives a convincing account of why he believes Netscape blew its early advantage over Microsoft through a series of technical mistakes and failures in software architecture. He had the impression that Andreesen and his fellow programmers weren’t properly managed by the more experienced people Clark had brought from Silicon Graphics. And he thought that Netscape’s CEO, Jim Barksdale, had no real interest in the details of technology, only in business.
But Clark’s book doesn’t throw much light on any of this. The only technical detail Clark shares with his readers - repeatedly - is that the browser Andreessen made for Netscape was “ten times faster” than the original Mosaic browser. As to how it would integrate with other software or how Netscape was making money from it, we’re left to guess (although he does describe the financial side of his negotiations with some big telecoms companies). It’s hard to say whether Clark or his publisher decided that anything vaguely technical would put readers off, or whether that really wasn’t Clark’s interest either.
The most vivid episode, because it’s described with enough detail to draw you into the story, is Clark’s battle with the University of Illinois and Spyglass, the company to which the university had licenced Mosaic. Through some fancy legal footwork, involving the closure of offices at different times in different time zones, Clark orchestrated his way out of being sued by Spyglass for unauthorised use of the intellectual property behind Mosaic (even though he had carefully made Andreessen and his colleagues rewrite the code from scratch at Netscape).
The battle with Microsoft, ultimately more important for the fate of Netscape, is less well covered, partly because the Department of Justice case was still being heard at the time of writing. As in Ferguson’s book, the figure of Gates is a huge force, slightly off stage in both accounts, but still influencing events, even if only because others were wondering what he’d do next. As Clark puts it, “Microsoft’s huge advantage changes the shape of the industry itself, in the way the gravitational pull of some huge celestial bodies actually warp space and time.”
Clark makes a good intellectual case for the breakup of Microsoft, which was being seriously discussed as part of the DoJ case. It never happened, but what did – just as the book was being finished, I’d guess – was the sale of Netscape to America Online in November 1998. Clark optimistically describes Netscape as now being a “portal company”, through its Netcenter. But unfortunately, no other software from Netscape ever matched the firework, both financially and technically, that its browser had been.
In the New York Times report of Netscape’s IPO, one can see just how much we now take for granted was still new: in August 1995, the Times still feels it necessary to refer to “the global computing web known as the Internet.” There was much important stuff that Clark was prescient about: he put the internet and business together to form a vision of a “revolutionary communication medium to grease the skids of consumerism and commerce”. He saw potential that others hadn’t yet recognised and acted upon it, with his own money.
Both Clark and Ferguson’s stories end on a downbeat note: they are both richer – much richer in the case of Clark – but their creations, software companies both, have failed to grow up as independent businesses (Ferguson’s was sold to Microsoft). But although we now know that Microsoft wasn’t broken up, the pessimism Clark and Ferguson feel about its inescapable dominance doesn’t hold any more. Apple, pretty much written off in both books, is resurgent, with a larger market cap than Microsoft (try telling that to anyone in 1998). And other internet businesses, notably Google, have shown that Microsoft can no longer exert the kind of “gravitational pull” that Clark describes.
Netscape did something big, pointing the way to our future, thanks to Clark. It was a firework worth building - however quickly it burnt - and worth remembering.
Here is a good, independent Netscape timeline.
March 17, 2024
Interesting read about the early innings of consumer Internet. Also, self-serving. Kudos to Jim for spotting an early trend and throwing a ton of his own money at smart people to capitalize on it, without having a predefined idea of how he'd make the enterprise profitable. My favorite part was at the end when the Microsoft menace becomes more palpable. Jim Clark's quote, "This feeling, of having been absolutely essential to something extraordinary, is the kind of pleasure that doesn't come often in life," summarizes the book well.
"The quality of a measure of how good a product is--and how smart a company is--can be seen in how quickly both can adapt to new and unplanned-for events."
"Doerr's formula for going public was simple: that the management team be complete... and that management be able to predict eight quarters of performance exceeding investor expectations."
"That is the most telling thing about dealing with Microsoft--any software 'partner' who licenses to them is eliminated."
"We were just a wedge in between Microsoft's ubiquitous operating system and the newly developing networked applications."
"Shit Happens. Some people try to wish it away, or simply forget about it. Others use it as fertilizer... My particular encounter with the shit happening helped me grow another company, and another life... In high tech, as in life, you don't get to hang around for long on the slopes of Mount Olympus."
"Success in the post-start-up stage is a matter of holding the line, moving forward through calculated risk, and solving hundreds of small problems every month, instead of coming up with big ideas every day and risking everything."
"The quality of a measure of how good a product is--and how smart a company is--can be seen in how quickly both can adapt to new and unplanned-for events."
"Doerr's formula for going public was simple: that the management team be complete... and that management be able to predict eight quarters of performance exceeding investor expectations."
"That is the most telling thing about dealing with Microsoft--any software 'partner' who licenses to them is eliminated."
"We were just a wedge in between Microsoft's ubiquitous operating system and the newly developing networked applications."
"Shit Happens. Some people try to wish it away, or simply forget about it. Others use it as fertilizer... My particular encounter with the shit happening helped me grow another company, and another life... In high tech, as in life, you don't get to hang around for long on the slopes of Mount Olympus."
"Success in the post-start-up stage is a matter of holding the line, moving forward through calculated risk, and solving hundreds of small problems every month, instead of coming up with big ideas every day and risking everything."
July 25, 2019
Feels very weird, woo woo, retro to read this 1999 book by Jim Clark. It was written at the height of Clark's confidence and the acme of Netscape's ascendance. Netscape would make Clark's fortune again when the company was sold to AOL. And today?
March 8, 2021
I worked with a Netscape integrator in the late 1990s. Yes, indeed, Microsoft is evil; Bill Gates truly destroyed a fantastic product here that was never able to emerge into a powerhouse of its own.
January 23, 2025
Good telling of the rise of Netscape from the founder.
April 5, 2015
Netscape Time tells the story of the founding of the Mosaic Netscape Communications Corporation from the perspective of one of the two cofounders Jim Clark. Clark who struck gold twice in Silicon Valley history provided the funding for Marc Andreessen to build the first Netscape browser. Andreessen who developed Mosaic with a team of students at University of Illinois was not allowed to use the intellectual property and was sent off without any royalties where Clark came along after being forced out/leaving before he was forced out of his first start up. This book chronicles the early days of building Mozilla which was the monster that became Netscape. The goal for the new company was simple. Kill Mosaic. The way to do that was to build a faster and better browser to give access to the web. The book focuses on two villains in the form of the University of Illinois and Microsoft each attacking Netscape at different points in its start up life.
Ultimately Netscape did fulfill its mission of defeating the University and Mosaic (spyglass) and the details of the struggle and subsequent lawsuit are covered in depth. The early days of VC in the valley and the start of the dot com boom are also covered. Going public is also covered in the book and provides a look at how even a company with no profits could make billionaires and millionaires out of its founding members. The final piece is the confrontation with Microsoft and the birth of internet explorer. Clark exposes much of the early predatory practices of Microsoft that make it very easy to hate the dark lord of Redmond (the multiple references to Microsoft as Mordor throughout the book are hysterical). Ultimately this section comes off as more of a rant but within the rant is a scary look at practices that need to be stopped for the benefit of the consumers. This is a great read for those interested in the early history of the net and how the net developed.
Ultimately Netscape did fulfill its mission of defeating the University and Mosaic (spyglass) and the details of the struggle and subsequent lawsuit are covered in depth. The early days of VC in the valley and the start of the dot com boom are also covered. Going public is also covered in the book and provides a look at how even a company with no profits could make billionaires and millionaires out of its founding members. The final piece is the confrontation with Microsoft and the birth of internet explorer. Clark exposes much of the early predatory practices of Microsoft that make it very easy to hate the dark lord of Redmond (the multiple references to Microsoft as Mordor throughout the book are hysterical). Ultimately this section comes off as more of a rant but within the rant is a scary look at practices that need to be stopped for the benefit of the consumers. This is a great read for those interested in the early history of the net and how the net developed.
May 6, 2020
It's interesting, but unfortunately Clark spends most of the book talking about the formation of Netscape and up to the release of Netscape 1.0. The fight with Microsoft, while certainly not ignored, is given just one chapter. Furthermore, the book ends before the collapse of Netscape is obvious and its sale to AOL, so it doesn't tell the full history.
Want to read
September 26, 2014- Microsoft held so much captive power over Windows users that it could force them to use Internet Explorer over Netscape (cross synergies)
- it also has much clout with larger scale and bargaining power over customers (PC OEMs)
- it also has much clout with larger scale and bargaining power over customers (PC OEMs)
October 11, 2009
Great book describing breakpoints in history of modern world.
Inside views on things which wrote history, mostly surprising and full of emotional context by author.
Really good book to read.
Inside views on things which wrote history, mostly surprising and full of emotional context by author.
Really good book to read.
June 15, 2013
Absolutely fascinating look into the company that really got the internet out to the masses first.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews