Summary: Joshua Schachter, founder of del.icio.us, is someone I’ve wanted to talk to from the very first day of this podcast. As we’ll discuss, del.icio.us …

Summary: Josh Marshall is one of the key people who brought blogging into the realm of serious, award winning and respectable journalism. The story of …

Summary: Well, as we say in this episode, he’ll always be known as the inventor of the hashtag, but Chris Messina has been central to …

Summary: Everyone knows Karen Wickre, because she’s one of those classic connectors. Once we finally got in touch, I wasn’t surprised to learn we knew …

Summary: Kevin Scott is the current Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft. We talk about his entire career, how being an academic seemed to be his …

Summary: Today we continue my efforts to preserve the history of the ISP industry. Today it feels like the Internet is simply all around us …

Summary: 20 years ago, the acclaimed documentarian Doug Block released a landmark film, Home Page. Doug’s documentary accidentally chronicled the birth of blogging, featuring several …

Summary: We’ve had a couple of people come on here to discuss how the New York Times got online, but the spiritual yin to their …

  Summary: We’ve had a couple of people come on here to discuss how the New York Times got online, but the spiritual yin to …

Summary: I said in the book, I think TheGlobe.com was the quintessential dot-com company. We spoke to one of the cofounders previously, Todd Krizelman. Todd …

Summary: David Schwartz is the Chief Technology Officer at Ripple, the company behind the cryptocurrency XRP. What is it like to start, build and build …

Summary: Ken Norton is a partner at GV, Alphabets venture capital arm, but before that, he was a product manager at Google, where he led …

Summary: Matt Britton not only sold the first ads to and for Facebook, way back in 2004, he gives us a really insightful and, frankly, …

Summary: I figure most of you should know who Matt Cutts is, but if you don’t, let’s just leave it at this: he’s about to …

Summary: John McCrea is a Zelig-like personality who pops up in so many of the narratives we’ve already covered: Apple. Netscape. Doing battle with Microsoft. …

Summary: This story has gone down in Silicon Valley lore as the ultimate cautionary tale. Digg was the earliest high flying startup in early social …

Summary: Lisa Napoli got a job straight out of college at CNN in its earliest days, which is a crazy startup story in it’s own …

Summary: Rosanne Siino has been on my list to talk to from day one of this podcast. As you know, I started by reaching out …

Today we’re going to go back to take a look at early journalism on the web. Karl Mattson helped launched one of the first political …

Summary: Claude Shannon was a mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer known as “the father of information theory.” In the pantheon of cool people who made …

Summary: Robert Reid, the founder of Rhapsody, can be considered the Godfather (founding father?) of the streaming music reality we now live in. But guess what? …

Summary: Jason Kottke, of kottke.org fame, was one of the early bloggers, one of the first bloggers to go pro, and one of the few …

Summary: People have been yelling at me for years that I’ve not covered more technical aspects of the web’s history, especially things like Java. Specifically …

Summary: Today, a man who needs no introduction: New York Times Technology Columnist Farhad Manjoo. This episode was recorded about two months or so ago, …

Summary: No joke, this is one of my favorite episodes we’ve ever done. Eugene Wei was an early employee at Hulu, so we get some …

Summary: Claire Evans is the author of the new book: Broad Band The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet. This is the …

Summary: Gregg Spiridellis has been making things go viral on the web since before the term VIRAL was even a thing. His company, JibJab has …

Summary: David Pakman is a well respected venture capitalist at Venrock, but also a lifelong musician and music fan. Earlier in his career he played …

Summary: It gets my goat that these days, the history of ecommerce begins and ends with Amazon. There were so many companies and big ideas …

Summary: Plato was an online and interactive learning computer system developed in the 1960s at the University of Illinois. But in the early 1970s, Plato …

Summary: Bob Stein was the founder of Voyager, publisher of the first consumer CDROM titles, and, far and away the leader of the CDROM industry …

Summary: You might know him as Rob Malda, or you might know him as CmdrTaco, but he was the founder of the great geek social …

Summary: Dave Winer has been called the godfather of a lot of things. The godfather of blogging. The Godfather of Podcasting. One of the key …

Summary: Nicole Laporte has a cover story in Fast Company magazine this month about Giphy, potentially the next big story in online advertising and marketing, …

Summary: Om Malik is, of course, a legend. One of the first journalists on the “tech beat” in the 1990s, one of the first bloggers to …

Summary: What is generally considered the worst merger of all time, and certainly the crescendo event of the dotcom bubble era, today we take a …

Summary: David Shen was employee #17 at Yahoo, where he eventually had a hand in, not only the birth of advertising as the primary business …

Summary: Karel Baloun was the first senior software engineer hired at Facebook in 2005. This was after the Accel round of funding, when Facebook truly …

Summary Don Melton is popularly known as the father of the Safari web browser or WebKit. He’s basically a web browser legend. Not only does …

Summary The first text message (or, to be accurate, SMS message) was sent on December 3, 1992. It was sent by Neil Papworth, and it …

Summary As promised, Mike Slade is back to tell stories from the period 1998 through 2004, when he was Special Assistant to Steve Jobs. Background …

Summary A lot of people give credit to Justin Hall for being, if not the first, then spiritually, at least, the “first” blogger. Since early …

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, …