NETSCAPE Tan Hernandez

Tape 123

think theres still lot of ambivalence especially in

engineering Engineers as whole tend to be the

colloquial term is bit head We care about constantly

discovering or inventing new technology and AOLs focus

and Netscapes growing focus has been content and

marketing orientation and advertising and thats not

nearly as interesting to someone whos sort of techno

headashist But for someone whos interested in

stability more long term stability in the Internet

which is not know for its general stability this is

probably good move for stock price and variety of other

things But for someone like me its time to be moving

on finding the next new thing to go try and the next

technology to develop

It hasnt been couple of years its only been six

months still believe in that still believe in

retiring from the computer industry and doing something

completely different Maybe itll be bartending

doubt it realistically On thing that Ive still been

doing or can is speaking at schools to middle and

age
high school kids Girls lot of times about math and

sciences and trying to get kid interested in pursuing

math and sciences in college and getting them into high

tech industry Thats something Ill probably continue

to pursue Theres new foundation in Oakland that Im

probably going to volunteering time at for high risk

youth and computer training Like as not Ill probably

end up teaching algebra in high school when Im 35 who

knows But like working with kids and like putting

that kind of investment in towards the next generation

think thats kind of fun Though its sort of ironic for

me to say something like that since Im barely out of

that .still in my 20s But who knows Im really

excited about this new opportunity that have now

working for Blue Martini have to turn my life

completely upside down to do it switching jobs and

selling my house .thats life Probably be working 20

hours week 20 hours day again for couple of

months

Sure Im still young in stupid as like to put it so

can get away with stuff like that

 think its growing Its still not an even enough

ratio for my comfort Theres lot of studies about why

women arent in high tech Whether its from the older

generation not used to being as aggressive as this

industry requires know that and all of the women

that know of that work with are all very aggressive

but were also young or younger think that our

generation is sort of leading the for the renaissance

way

as far as women in high tech think the next

generation is gonna be even stronger Im hoping You

know go to the schools--thats what Im hoping for To

really get them excited about this sort of thing The new

company Im going to theres already several women

there so its not like Im going into boys club Im

the 19th employee hired and think theres four or five

of us on the female side which for start up is

pretty good ratio and hopefully it will continue to grow

especially in engineering

Oh man how much timeve you got When started at

Netscape there were couple of hundred of us so it was

still even when started it was already starting to get

little big But the thing about it that will

everyone

continue to talk about was the camaraderie that spawned

from knowing that we changed the world You drive down

the road and you look at billboard now you see URL

you see homepage You watch TV and in the commercials

will be homepage You look at the movies and there are

URLs at the end of the credits going Universal Paramount

or whatever did that We did that CPD When

my team

started people didnt know what HTML was what the

World Wide Web was it was this knew thing And three

years later we probably were responsible for the single

most pervasive technical innovation as far as reaching

the -- market have ever

as happened cant help but

feel the most insane pride and awe that was part of

that Its different company now and thats okay

Its growing its doing different but or those of us

who were there for that time and even creation

through

of Mozilla.org which is another world-changing event at

least within the software industry to be able to feel

like we contributed that much we were involved in those

amazing times Well carry that with us forever That

will never--to that extent never--happen again

Think of it this way The Internets been around since

the sixties--this web of communications And up through

1994 95 the Internet was the realm of for

technocracy
the elite e1.eetea-l government and universities and

whatever It was not friendly to the rest of the world

But it was this amazing way of transmitting information

and getting information if you knew how to use it That

wasnt necessarily an easy thing The World Wide Web

made it so that grandma sitting at home you know with

her Apple could go to Italy or Russia or look up all

of these things without ever leaving home All of

sudden the power of the Internet that had been there for

years was available to everyone in an easy way And that

was ---vision This could be easy for everybody if there

was only interface that made it Point and

that way

click the universal language So in that way we think

about it now One of the largest booksellers is

Amazon om And that is completely electronic Five

years ago that would have been unheard of The only

people who did things in that way were the large

companies who had access to the Internet interfaces and

had people who were specifically hired just to do that

sort of thing Now anybody can do it An eighteen-year

old kid is doing this on-line business now forget

exactly what hes doing His web site just cracked me up

though He did it at high school with his bodies and

its real legitimate business and hes reaching

thousands of people Its amazing And think the

technology as far as Internet communications and commerce

aot
is just gonna go through the rettgfl dont think were

going to see the end of the effect that Netscapes

starting Its snowball rolling down hill and gaining

its just going to continue to increase In fact the

new company Im going to five years ago it couldnt

existed Its e-commerce Its applications

easier for merchants to sell to their customers via

line transactions demonstrations of product blah bl

blah Brand new industries and markets starting in the

Internet and the World Wide Web are taking place all

time

e2y

E-commerce is doing buying and selling on-line So

instead of going to the bookstore to buy book you go

to book web page and order book And one good

example of that is Amazon.com Other examples of that

are clothing stores Macys has an on-line web system

where you can go and order clothes It has value for

variety of reasons One its very easy to go on and

click and get your stuff Two when in to store

you go

right now you walk into Macys and you see something
there maybe its not in your size Then you have to go

to the counter and say do you have this in size whatever

and they dont and they to call and order it or they

have to track it down in another store or who knows If

youre on-line you can say want this size want this

color and point click

t1
P2f

Thats kind of an interesting question and its actually

something thats been discussed lot over the past

couple of days AOL and Netscape now are definitely

moving towards more marketing driven environments and

direction Which means there focusing on providing on

line services like web mail or calendaring services or

buying airplane tickets or whatever it is that they want

to provide think the merger between Netscape and AOL

is going to expand that The AOL market has been towards

kids getting home from school and people getting off

work where as Netscape market has been people at work

So think the merger makes it more comprehensive

target audience The technology is going to be now more

focused towards making those services more easily

available When Netscape started it was more the

technology for its own sake and thats the glory of

start-up is all about.0 The end result for start-up is

that you want to be successful which means you have to

provide for some business plan at the same time because

the technology you created is brand new there is that

innovation and spirit of discovery that is so pervasive

Netscape doesnt really have it anymore Its gone

beyond that -5

think its going to continue to be that the places

where new technology is going to happen is almost always

going to be at the start-up And the new world is

going to be that the start-up creates the new technology

and then the bigger companies may acquire it And the

big companies grow that way Its like Microsoft

Microsoft doesnt invent anything They acquire their

technologies

4q7.\

dont the high tech industry is ever going to become

world where you work at one company for twenty years and

you get pension and you go As manager at Netscape

would look at resumes and if someone had been at

company for more than five years would wonder why

Thats long time Ive been at Netscape for 1/2AJ\/1tJ11

years and it feels like forever You need the constant

change to keep you on your toes The business does move

very quickly the technology moves very quickly To stay

on top of it youre constantly moving constantly

thinking constantly re-evaluating Thats great

think that that sort of drive that moves us from company

to company and from project to project will keep the

technology coming and five years from now were going to

look at the early days of the World Wide Web and goMy
God look at that Prehistoric technology yech

-32
Ever since gave notice its been real weird Some of

these engineers and have been together through the

entire Ive been at Netscape Brian Olstrom in

particular he came out two months after aid and weve

shipped versions of the client you couldnt even count

them all Its hard to leave that closeness We were

really very tight with so many of these people tm also

very excited about moving on Along with that is that

there are several other Netscapers that are also at this

company or considering moving to this company have

friend that refers Silicon Valley as Silicon Valley Corp

and that we all just work for different divisions of that

mythical company and we tend to move around in packs

have know doubt Ill be working with these people again

Their great people to work with And Im interested in

meeting the new people that havent met before My new

VP seems like really interesting guy look forward

to seeing what sort of tbings he has to offer

AOct0_P
The quote that came out of this article was Netscape

lived fast died young and left tired corpse

dont know that agree with that dont think

Netscapes done yet even given the merger and everything

thats going on think theres still some life in her

But its interesting to see lot of people are writing

as if this is the greatest thing to happen to high-tech

industry since sliced bread and other organizations are

writing the obituary Itll be interesting to see what

happens over the next couple of months with AOL

3.933
plan fully on writing book was actually lit

major in my former life before decided that computers

was better major to end up with kind of have to if

only for myself Ive got to write dowii what happened

Cause it was the single most amazing experience think

anyone could have

2-t 00
thought it was done deal It was sort of sinking

sensation But like said Im moving on Theyre

going to do what theyre going to do And theyll

probably do well have feeling its going to be very

successful but not in the way that would want

someplace to be successful In having the product thats

so good it speaks for itself

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