Justin Frankel, Creator of Winamp
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 …
Interviews
On the 20th Birthday of the MP3, An Interview With The “Father” of the MP3, Karlheinz Brandenburg
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: …
Owen Thomas Returns!
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 …
Chris Cooper, Founder of Quote.com
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, …
Steve Yelvington Discusses Newspapers and the Early Web
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. …
Ted Barnett, Founder of When.com
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 …
Journalist Maggie Mahar Discusses the Dot-Com “Bubble”
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 …
David Bohnett, Founder of Geocities
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 …
TheGlobe Co-Founder Todd Krizelman
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, …
iVillage Co-Founder Nancy Evans
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 …
Early eBay Executive (and California Gubernatorial Candidate?) Steve Westly
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 …
Early Amazon Engineer and Co-Developer of the Recommendation Engine, Greg Linden
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 …
Chapter 8, Supplemental 1 – Robert Levitan of iVillage and Flooz
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 …
Chapter 4, Supplemental 10 – Infoseek Founder (and inventor of the optical mouse) Steve Kirsch
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, …
W. Joseph Campbell and the Watershed Year that Was 1995
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 …
Chapter 7, Supplemental 5 – CDNow CEO Mike Krupit
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 …
Chapter 7, Supplemental 4 – Gary Kremen, Founder of Match.com
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 …
Chapter 7, Supplemental 3 – Catalog Manager Glenn Fleishman Discusses Amazon’s Early Days
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, …
Amazon’s Technical Co-Founder and Employee #1, Shel Kaphan
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 …
Chapter 4, Supplemental 9 – Lycos Founder and CEO Bob Davis
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 …
Chapter 7, Supplemental 1 – Amazon Director, Customer Service Strategy, Jane Slade
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 …
Chapter 4, Supplemental 8 – Excite Co-Founder Ryan McIntyre
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 …
The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, Co-Founder of Akamai Technologies
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 …
Chapter 4, Supplemental 7 – Excite CEO George Bell
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 …
Leader of the Internet Explorer Project, Ben Slivka
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 …
Chapter 5, Supplemental 9 – CNET Founder Halsey Minor
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, …
Chapter 5, Supplemental 8 – Wired Magazine Founding Editor John Battelle
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 …
Chapter 5, Supplemental 7 – Joe McCambley Discusses Advertising and the First Banner Ads
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 …
Chapter 5, Supplemental 6 – An Interview With Owen Thomas About Hotwired and Suck
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 …
Chapter 5, Supplemental 5 – HotWired CEO Andrew Anker
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 …
Chapter 5, Supplemental 4 – Real Networks CEO Rob Glaser
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 …
Chapter 5, Supplemental 3 – Pathfinder Executive Oliver Knowlton
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 …
Chapter 3, Supplemental 2 – She Gave The World A Billion AOL CDs – An Interview With Marketing Legend Jan Brandt
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 …
Chapter 5, Supplemental 2 – Head of Time New Media Executive Linda McCutcheon
Summary: Linda McCutcheon is another Pathfinder veteran. She came up through Time Inc. on the marketing side, so she was the one responsible for …
Chapter 5, Supplemental 1 – Pathfinder Editorial Executive Craig Bromberg
Summary: Craig Bromberg has had a long and fascinating career at the intersection of media and technology. An early adopter of online technologies, Craig …
Chapter 4, Interview 6 – Co-Founder of FocaLink, Dave Zinman
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 …
Chapter 4, Supplemental 5 – Co-Founder of DoubleClick, Kevin O’Connor
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 …
Chapter 4, Supplemental 4 – Yahoo’s Employee #3, Tim Brady
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 …
Chapter 4, Supplemental 3 – Co-Founder of Netgravity, John Danner
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. …
The Incredible True Story Behind AMC’s Halt And Catch Fire – How Compaq Cloned IBM And Created An Empire
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 …
Chapter 4, Supplemental 2 – Co-Creator of the First Remote Ad Server, Jason Strober
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 …
Chapter 2, Supplemental 1 – An Interview With Internet Explorer Team Member, Hadi Partovi
Summary Hadi Partovi was one of the original 9 people on the Internet Explorer project. He left Microsoft in the late 90s to found …
Chapter 4, Supplemental 1 – An Interview With Craig Kanarick, Co-Designer of the World’s First Banner Ad and Co-Founder of Razorfish
Summary Craig Kanarick was one of the people responsible for the first ever banner ad, which appeared on Oct. 27, 1994 on Hotwired.com. As mentioned in the …
Chapter 1, Supplemental 5 – An Interview With Rob McCool
Summary: Rob McCool is another of the core group of original Mosaic programmers who went on to found Netscape. Unlike a lot of the others …
Chapter 1, Supplemental 4 – An Interview With Jon Mittelhauser
Summary: Jon Mittelhauser is another of the core group of original Mosaic programmers who went on to found Netscape. Jon worked on the Windows versions …
Chapter 1, Supplemental 3 – An Interview With Aleks Totic
Summary: Aleks Totic was one of the original Mosaic engineers at the NCSA, responsible for the Mac version of Mosaic. They don’t call him “Mac …
Chapter 1, Supplemental 2 – An Interview With Chris Wilson
Summary: Chris Wilson has been working on browser technology for the better part of two decades. A member of the original Mosaic team, he …
Chapter 1, Supplemental 1 – An Interview With Lou Montulli
Summary: Lou Montulli is a web pioneer. In 1991 and 1992 he co-authored a text web browser called Lynx with Michael Grobe and Charles Rezac …