Valley of the Boom (2018) s01e05 Episode Script
Part 5: segfault
1 BARKSDALE: AOL is a hell of a brand.
AOL EXECUTIVE: If we combine our strengths, we can build a firewall against Microsoft.
BARKSDALE: Very next day, AOL announced a deal with Microsoft.
They bundled Internet Explorer into their operating system.
- MARC: How long? - BARKSDALE: Three or four quarters before it blows up our bottom line.
WISKOWSKI: You can stop selling.
We're in.
DAN: This guy who has been calling himself Michael Fenne is really David Kim Stanley, a fugitive of the law.
MICHAEL: iBash! This is the biggest star-studded musical event ever! BARRY: I was thinking, we should do a test run.
- MICHAEL: Why would I do that? - BARRY: To find out if there are any kinks and, if there are, iron them out.
STEPHAN: These IPOs are becoming this rite of passage that legitimizes these companies.
How great will it be when we can just get back to running our company.
TODD: 30 million more in capital to play with? - Pretty great.
- STEPHAN: Are we going to price? - Is this thing going through or what? - BANKER: Yes.
Yep we are! PIT BOSS: 87! 87! (CELEBRATING).
Get that money It'll make you scream and shout Get that money Yeah that's what it's all about You like it baby Get that money It'll make you scream and shout Get that money Yeah that's what it's all about Get that money You know you like it baby Give it to me Money Get that money Oh GUY: You suck! DARRIN: On the day of the IPO, Globe.
com stock hit $97 a share.
Two months later, it had dropped to $22.
Now what dramatic misstep had Paternot and Krizelman made? They hadn't.
That was just the nature of the market during the boom.
Valuations were all over the map.
Was TheGlobe ever actually a billion-dollar company? I don't know, but I will tell you this: the same people that love you for turning their $2000 into $200,000 are singing a different tune when those winnings go bye-bye.
MAN: Bye-bye.
DARRIN: You're no longer the whiz kids who with drive and ingenuity built something revolutionary.
You're the sons of bitches destroying their nest egg.
You see, that's the deal with playing on the big stage.
The whole world is watching.
Rooting for you to reach those magical heights, and waiting for you to slip up, praying you do, and then cursing you for it.
But all you can do is keep on dancing and hope your next move will send you shooting right back up them pop charts.
(CHOKES).
Lemme go, lemme go, lemme go! Hey! Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey! What are you doing, son?! Square your shoulders.
Make sure your back foot is perpendicular with your throwing hand.
You ready? Launch.
Oh-oh, whoo! From now on, that's how you throw! I had 3000 shares of Globe.
com stock.
BARKSDALE: DOJ moving ahead with the anti-trust, that was uh, a good thing.
But it didn't change the fact that we lost $88 million that quarter.
Had to lay off a fifth of the work force.
About 500 people.
ROSEANNE: This idea that we actually had to let people go, that after this crazy growth, quarter after quarter after quarter, that we'd come to this place where it just was what had to happen? TARA: These are people that you have spent 80% of your waking hours with.
BARKSDALE: We were not selling as much as we had hoped to sell.
And we had hired a lot of people and we had to lay some people off.
You hate to do that.
You just hate it, but it was necessary.
It was the only way to stay pushing ahead.
REPORTER: Mr.
Barksdale, do you anticipate more layoffs? REPORTER: What do you say to investors panicking about the stock price? REPORTER: How much more market share can Netscape afford to lose? BARKSDALE: How you all doin'? ROSEANNE: There's a ton of interest still.
The sales people are out selling like crazy, their phones are still ringing like crazy, we're expanding all over the world, so we're just trying to fend off the ideas that we are dying, trying to project a very positive image.
REPORTER: Is Netscape dead? BARKSDALE: You all take care now.
ROSEANNE: There's me personally who thought, "Oh God! This is lookin' bad.
" And then there's me VP of Corporate Communications who said, "Okay! What are we doing next?" They're gonna ask, but let's not get stuck in the whys and the what fors of how we got here.
We need to be projecting confidence about Netscape's future.
MARC: Happy, peppy, bursting with love, got it.
ROSEANNE: Yeah, so as much as you can, let's just guide them toward our strategy.
MARC: Are we going to have enough embalming fluid? ROSEANNE: Netscape as the Comeback Kid, - how we're re-emerging - MARC: You know, to get the dead body ready for viewing, so everyone can ooh and ahh about how lifelike everything looks.
Look at the corpse! ROSEANNE: For crying out loud, Marc! Really, please.
MARC: It's just a joke, Rosanne.
Lighten up.
ROSEANNE: I'm just trying to do my job.
MARC: Which apparently entails talking through every single detail - till we're blue in the face.
- ROSEANNE: Maybe if you'd shut up with your cute remarks, we could have been done ten minutes ago.
MARC: Maybe if we didn't have this meeting at all, I could have been home sleeping.
ROSEANNE: I'm so sorry I dragged you out of bed at the crack of 10:30.
MARC: Hey, I was here last night until 4, okay? BARKSDALE: Alright, alright, that's enough.
This is not a position any of us want to be in.
I mean, emotions are running high.
We've got the layoffs, the hit on the stock price.
Jim Clark personally lost a billion dollars last month.
Rumor is he might even have to downsize to a smaller island.
CLARK: I feel like you're minimizing my hardship.
BARKSDALE: C'mon, I'd never do that.
MARC: Rosanne, I've done this hundreds of times.
I know what to say and what not to say.
- ROSEANNE: Great.
- BARKSDALE: Ok, look, no tree grows all the way to heaven, but we got a lot of life left in us here.
This is a helluva tree.
We just need to trim away some of the unhealthy branches and get this thing strong and growing again.
- CLARK: Even if we end up selling it for the lumber.
- BARKSDALE: Ok, Jim.
- CLARK: Nobody's shelling out for a dead tree.
- BARKSDALE: Jim, Jim, c'mon, what I'm saying is, you know, stay civil, get back to work.
ROSEANNE: But we also have to be clearer about what our strategy is going forward, because if indeed we cannot compete on the browser, then we have to convince people that there's some other reason to come to Netscape.
That was our job.
DAN: iBash was Pixelon's plan to make the biggest splash in a world where dot-coms were constantly trying to outdo each other.
BRIAN: Everybody's vying for eyeballs, trying to get people to pay attention so what better way to get somebody to pay attention to you than throw this big, crazy party in Vegas.
MARK: I've been investing in technology companies my entire adult life.
There are certain red flags that I always look for that tell me the company's a scam, and probably the biggest one, the most enormous red flag for any potential investment is throwing a party and the bigger the party, the bigger the scam.
No exceptions.
Pixelon is the poster boy for the bigger the party, the bigger the scam.
MICHAEL: Ok, so he's doing a set in this little club in Greenwich Village.
And it's early in his career, he's still going by his birth name, Anthony Benedetto.
So he nearly pees his drawers, because who's in the audience that night? Mr.
Bob Hope.
- TOADY: Bob Hope the comedian? - MICHAEL: No, Bob Hope the plumber.
And he was taking in a show with his butcher friend, Bing Crosby, and Elizabeth Taylor the court stenographer.
I'm just joshin' with ya, Don.
Of course Bob is wowed by the show, and he asks Tony to tour with him, but he says, "Kid, Anthony Benedetto's just too long for the marquee.
How 'bout we call you Tony Bennett?" So Tony may have left his heart in San Francisco, but he left his name in Greenwich Village.
JOYCE: I can't believe that your husband had drinks with Tony Bennett.
MICHAEL: Hey due diligence.
I had to make sure that those pipes were still in primo condition.
SHEILA: You think everyone can meet him after the show tomorrow? MICHAEL: Oh, sure, I'll give him a call first thing once we arrive.
PAUL: To iBash! TOADY: To Michael Fenne! MICHAEL: To God.
ALL: To God.
BARKSDALE: There was a movement going on in that time, about how if you had open source with many people contributing to a software product, you had a much better chance of developing something great, than if you just had a few people working on it.
We put the Netscape browser up as an open-source contribution to this movement.
TARA: Do not toy with me.
JEFF: I'm not toying with you.
I never toy with people.
SEAN: It would require a level of cleverness I wouldn't normally associate with him.
BARKSDALE: And the open source effort, the software was called Mozilla.
TARA: Open source? Seriously? SEAN: I'm telling you, it's happening.
TARA: They said, alright, we have this crazy idea that's gonna help us compete, we're going to release the open source of the browser and get open source developers to help us.
SPENCE: The Net was used mainly by engineers, researchers, some companies, universities to share information, or one team has figured out.
- to allow everyone to benefit from what one person, - JEFF: My famous chicken salad.
People ask for the recipe all the time, and I'm always like it's none of your beeswax.
But that was the old me.
New me is like, you want the recipe, it's yours.
I'll even do you one better: you have ideas on how to improve on my creation, go for it.
Fontina cheese.
Nice.
- Cherry mostarda.
- JEFF: No clue what that is, but looks good.
I definitely know what that is.
SPENCE: We were all about this history of open collaboration and creation and research.
- JEFF: Ok.
- SPENCE: We understood the value of sharing and the Internet was really all about that.
JEFF: Ok.
So maybe I'd have thought to add at least some of those ingredients on my own, but even if I did, it's not like I have a huge team working on this and I don't have time to fry the bacon, make the mostara, go to the store and get the cheese.
I'm hungry now! So with the help of this outside community of chicken salad aficionados, I have this tasty looking sandwich in a fraction of the time.
Basically, that's open source.
SPENCE: Choosing to open source the browser was a perfect maneuver in my mind.
JEFF: So you're thinking, great, he's got a delicious sandwich, but everyone knows the recipe, what's he gettin' out of this? Well, a tasty sandwich is gonna attract eyeballs.
And while checking out your sando, those eyeballs may take notice of some of the other things you have to offer.
WOMAN: Any chance I could have a bite of that sandwich? JEFF: Sure.
Should we eat it Lady and the Tramp style? WOMAN: Ew.
JEFF: Obviously they have to like the other things you're offering.
ROSEANNE: To do something like that, that 80 million, 90 million people would be using? That's certainly unprecedented at the time.
SPENCE: Because it was sorta flying in the face of what Microsoft was doing and what, you know, Wall Street and the press understood what was supposed to happen.
ROSEANNE: You know, that's what we did in releasing our initial browser back in, you know, '94! And here we were again, it felt like returning to our audacious roots, you know? And I loved that.
SPENCE: It paved the way for the Mozilla project now, and Firefox, the Chrome team from Google, definitely influenced, everything has been influenced by it.
DAN: My job at the The Industry Standard was a reporter.
I first met Michael Fenne when iBash happened.
MICHAEL: We have this proprietary technology.
Revolutionary technology, $28 million in the bank because our friends at Advanced Equities, out there in Chicago, they recognize that Pixelon has built a pipeline to the future.
And it struck me: hey, we can't keep hiding our light under a bushel.
iBash is our candlestick and it's gonna giveth light all over the world.
DAN: I'd really love to hear more about what brought you to this point.
You know, how does a kid from Appalachia end up a tech pioneer? You are from Appalachia, right? MICHAEL: What makes you say that? DAN: I had a girlfriend whose family was from there.
- Your accent.
- MICHAEL: What accent? We've got the biggest names in all of music, nobody's gonna give a tinker's cuss who Michael Fenne is.
Hey Paul, c'mere, I want you to meet Dan Goodin.
He's a reporter doing a story on our rise to glory.
DAN: And saying that the reason that he's doing it is so that he can make this major splash and get, get all of this attention.
And yet, he's meeting a reporter, and he's, he doesn't wanna answer any questions about his personal life.
He doesn't want any pictures of him taken.
And he seems not at all comfortable being the topic of conversation.
MICHAEL: Paul here is our newly christened CEO.
He still has a few glass shards on his shirt sleeve where I smashed him with a champagne bottle.
Alright, can you go check on how my wife and see how she's getting on with those kids? - PAUL: I'm on it.
- MICHAEL: Thank you, Paul.
Yeah, we invited a group of disadvantaged children to iBash.
Leann Rimes, she helped spearhead it.
Lovely young lady.
And beautiful voice.
She, oh, wait, are you more of a Who fan? - DAN: I love The Who.
- MICHAEL: I knew it.
I knew you loved The Who.
GARY: At some point it was announced that The Who had been paid $2 million to reunite.
MICHAEL: It's gotta give you goose bumps knowing that in a few short hours Pete Townshend's gonna be out there windmilling his guitar, and you're gonna have a front row seat.
DAN: Well, I mean, everyone with an Internet connection is going to have a front row seat, right? MICHAEL: Yeah.
Hey.
C'mon.
DAN: Is there a number Pixelon's banking on? Millions? Tens of millions? MICHAEL: Could be a billion.
STAGE MANAGER: Sir! You shouldn't be here.
Did you hear me? DAN: That's Michael Fenne, that's Michael Fenne.
STAGE MANAGER: Well, Mr.
Fenne, I'm so sorry, I didn't MICHAEL: I, it, honest mistake.
Don't give it a second thought.
Hey, I should really personally go check on Leann and Sheila, ok? We'll talk later.
DAN: Ok.
STEPHAN: There was a motto, uh, I believe at Netscape which the CEO, a termed he coined called GBF, get big fast.
- CLARK: Get big fast.
- TODD: Get big fast.
ED: No matter what the expense, get big.
CLARK: If you can get big, then it's harder for someone else - to take you down.
- ED: Get big fast.
STEPHAN: Doesn't matter how much you're losing, get big fast, be the biggest.
ED: Get bigger, get bigger, buy things, and so we did that.
TODD: We started doing some acquisitions.
ED: Now we were managing a public company, you know, with a nine-figure valuation.
We needed to feed that valuation, I don't know what we spent, a couple hundred million dollars maybe on acquisitions.
TODD: We started to get into the video game business.
STEPHAN: It was like, ah, gaming! We went and bought a whole network of gaming sites: Games Domain.
Happy Puppy.
Hey, if you buy a company that has hundreds of millions in revenues, that brings stability to your business, that makes that billion-dollar valuation we have more real.
TODD: We were trying to keep up to prove that the valuation we had been given was something that was actually deserved.
STEPHAN: Mike Egan was like, hey Todd, you know this guy who runs Sunglass Hut.
They don't have an Internet strategy yet, let's create one for them and have Sunglass Hut.
Roll in vitamins are the future, there's Vitamins.
com now, it's a thing, why don't we buy Vitamins.
com.
If you acquire something with huge revenues that's successful, that helps.
But if you buy the wrong stuff, we were getting caught up in chasing after the next new new thing as well.
And it was a massive distraction from our core focus.
ED: Sort of the nature of the beast.
You're changing ownership, you're changing the way things are managed.
STEPHAN: When you're on to a winning formula, focus like crazy, double down, get better and better at that one thing.
TODD: Focus on the original business.
ED: You're trying new things, you're combining things, and sometimes uh, those things don't work.
JEFF: Why does this keep crashing?! What am I missing? Okay, think.
Think.
- MARC: Have you checked for segfaults? - JEFF: Duh, of course I checked for segf Hi.
Did you wanna? Here, I'll just, uh.
I'm Jeff, by the way.
WOMAN: Brought to you by Pixelon.
com, first full screen, full motion TV quality Internet broadcaster.
See more of Pixelon's iBash artist performances and backstage outtakes online at Pixelon.
com.
DAVID SPADE: Hold onto your trackballs, people, there's a lot more show coming right now.
BRIAN: The goal of iBash was to have this huge audacious launch party in Vegas.
DAN: You know, The Who, the Dixie Chicks, Tony Bennett, Kiss, LeAnn Rimes.
BRIAN: Faith Hill, and I don't even remember you know all, all the names that were out there and quite frankly some names I don't even, I'd never even heard of before.
SHEILA: Those kids, those poor kids.
Leann, she said I could call her Leann, she was talking with this one girl, dad's in jail, mother's an addict, I'm sorry.
Oh.
Oh, thank you.
DARRIN: I know, months have passed in the other stories and yet it is still the same day here.
Hmm.
So do you want to geek out about the laws of time and space? Or do you want to know what's going to happen with iBash?! iBash! iBash! C'mon! I don't want it back.
TOADY: Uh, Michael.
With the IPO just around the corner, listen, with the IPO, the IPO, just around the corner there, uh, and only so many shares to be had in a friends and family round, everyone, everyone's gonna be coming out of the woodwork claiming to be a dear-old friend of Michael Fenne, Mike Fenne, Mike Fenne.
I don't wanna put any pressure on you, ok? The last, the last thing I wanna do is put any pressure on you, but, you know, I think I need 200,000.
- JOYCE: I knew I recognized him.
- TOADY: Think maybe 200 thou.
Mike Fenne, Mike Fenne.
DAN: It, of course, was not known at the time that, you know, Michael Fenne was not in fact Michael Fenne but was in fact somebody named David Kim Stanley and he had launched this startup under completely false pretenses.
CREW: David! David! Mr.
Fenne? Sorry to bother you but someone really wants to get ahold of you.
MICHAEL: Oh.
Thank you.
TOADY: So, I don't know, what do you think? MICHAEL: What? ED: CNBC wasn't what it is today, but it was growing and they were doing a lot of shows about, "How could this be?" "Look at these young rich Internet gazillionaires!" "How can this company be worth more than General Motors?!" STEPHAN: We had people in the message boards that were like trying to short our stock, trying to pump our stocks, saying all sorts of (bleep).
ED: This story of rich, good-looking gazillionaire Internet kid had played.
And now they were looking for the other side of that story.
VOICEMAIL: You have 10 messages.
FEMALE (over phone): I hate you! I hate you! I read this in the message boards, everybody hates the founders! STEPHAN: There was a voicemail and on it was a woman who started just begging and saying, I put in my life savings, I think a couple hundred thousand dollars into TheGlobe and it's all gone.
For like a week this woman left us these voice mails of desperation and she couldn't understand where her money had gone.
- She thought we had it.
- VOICEMAIL: You have 8 messages.
FEMALE (over phone): I lost all my money! Please, please, pay me back all my money, and I will be fine! Pay it back! Pay it back! (bleep) you! STEPHAN: And she was getting more and more frantic and screaming on the phone and threatening us and it ended up with her yelling like, "I'm gonna kill you, I will kill you if you don't give me my money back.
" FEMALE (over phone): People keep saying they want you to die! Well you should die! I'm gonna kill you! I will kill you if I don't get my money back! ASSISTANT: The team from Azazz is here.
STEPHAN: I think I'd much rather stay and listen to this message again.
FEMALE (over phone): (bleep) you! I want my money back.
STEPHAN: There'd been on the news a story of a day trader going in and killing all his colleagues at work.
It was like a thing now, that people were losing their (bleep) and going and killing people.
So Todd and I were like, are you (bleep) me, we have someone who wants to kill us now, are we going to have to get security here, what's going on? JENN: Azazz? That's the online retailer? STEPHAN: I don't even know why we're in retail.
I mean I know why: Amazon got huge, or a bunch of analysts decided that Amazon got huge, so we of course have to plunk down $45 million on an e-commerce.
We sent them nearly 250,000 users a month but, their sales have barely moved.
They act like they're these avant-garde entrepreneurs and we're the old Wall Street dudes from Trading Places.
"Good morning, Randolph.
" "Good Morning, Mortimer.
" Hey, we were you like last year? We're actually younger than you.
You know, Yahoo would have totally dropped the hammer on them.
And I don't know, maybe that's what we should have done, but is that even who I am, what I want my leadership style to be? JENN: Hi.
STEPHAN: Sorry.
- I'm being totally.
- JENN: No, you don't need to.
It's okay.
I mean, it's not okay, but only because you're not okay.
STEPHAN: I just, I feel like a failure.
JENN: A failure? Yeah, yeah, that tracks.
You're 25 and co-CEO of a company you founded, a company that posted the largest first day gain of any IPO ever.
Plus, you're dating this super-smart, extremely cool, astoundingly beautiful woman.
- STEPHAN: And modest.
- JENN: Yes, for sure, by far the most modest person in all of human history.
(phones ringing).
MICHAEL: Hi, this is Michael Fenne.
EMPLOYEE: Mr.
Fenne, I'm so sorry to bother you, but the phones here are ringing off the hook.
People can't seem to access our live feed.
We called the encoders, but they said they're just uploading edited clips for the site, and no one seems to know who's actually handling the live simulcast.
We were hoping maybe you knew what the problem might be? MICHAEL: Why are you lying to me? EMPLOYEE: Why am I, I'm not, - which part do you think I'm lying about? - MICHAEL: Lying is a mortal sin.
Didn't your parents teach you that? Well one way or another, you're gonna learn.
When I get back, you're gonna come up to my office and I'm gonna give you a whooping.
- Now what'd you say your name was again? - EMPLOYEE: I didn't.
It's - it's Brad.
- MICHAEL: Bradley.
SHEILA: Hey! Faith Hill's about to go on.
Some of us are gonna head out into the audience.
MICHAEL: Mhm.
SHEILA: You know a lot of people say I look like Faith Hill.
MICHAEL: You're much prettier.
SHEILA: Aren't you just the sweetest thing? - So come on, we only have a few minutes.
- MICHAEL: Come on where? SHEILA: To watch Faith Hill.
You're coming, right? - You have to see her live.
- MICHAEL: What the hell is wrong with you?! I am trying to pull off the biggest event in Internet history and all I ask is that you let me do my job and not embarrass me! But there you are crying about Leann Rimes! Comparing yourself to Faith Hill.
Chasing after every celebrity with your autograph book like a stupid little schoolgirl! - SHEILA: I just thought - MICHAEL: You just thought.
Well don't just think! I swear, Sheila, I swear! Act like you've been here before! DIRECTOR: Phil, show me a preview of B and 4-A.
Someone get a chair for Mr.
Fenne? GARY: It turns out that streaming media over the Internet requires a fairly robust technological capability and infrastructure.
- DIRECTOR: Happy with what you're seeing? - MICHAEL: I am.
GARY: We had a venue, we had acts.
What we didn't have was the ability to actually show it.
DIRECTOR: In 3, 2 TECHNICIAN: I know who you are.
MICHAEL: You do? DAN: Michael Fenne was a completely fabricated identity.
Did not exist.
Michael Fenne was an elaborate cover for a fugitive from the law, David Kim Stanley.
MICHAEL: I'm Michael Fenne.
I'm Michael Fenne.
Hi, I'm Michael Fenne.
Michael Fenne.
Hi, I'm Mike Fenne.
Michael Fenne at your service.
David Kim Stanley? What? I'm Michael Fenne.
I'm Michael.
Fenne.
I'm (bleep) Michael! SHEILA: I don't know if you had a chance to see any of it, but Faith Hill sang, "This Kiss," ah, which is my absolute favorite.
She also sang "Breathe" and "The Way You Love Me.
" Anyway she was amazing! MICHAEL: I knew she would be.
What did I tell you? SHEILA: You told me she'd be amazing.
So should we go back to the party? MICHAEL: It's like you're reading my mind.
JANET: The Justice Department has charged Microsoft with engaging in anti-competitive and exclusionary practices designed to maintain its monopoly in personal computer operating systems and attempting to extend that monopoly to Internet browser software TARA: Hey, what's the ? SEAN: The government's now going after Microsoft with both barrels.
TARA: Cool.
I also have breaking news.
It's about Mozilla and the mountain of compiler errors still in the two and a half million lines of code we're racing the clock to finish.
JANET: No firm should be permitted to use its monopoly power to keep out competitors or to spurn innovations.
TARA: We're in a hurry.
We wanna get this done in Q1.
We said, 1998, Q1, that means March 31.
We have to release the source by the end of March, no slips, get it done.
And right up until the last second we were working on it.
It was insane.
SEAN: Seriously? - Yes.
Yes! - Whoo.
Yeah! Whooo! TARA: When we released the open source code, it was super exciting.
We sat there and watched the downloads off the FTP servers.
We were not sure if anybody was gonna wanna download it.
But, there were downloads all over the place.
It was amazing.
It was something that we could feel strongly about.
Like oh my God, nobody's done this before.
It's kind of like Netscape part 2.
Yeah! BARKSDALE: Is this working, can you hear me? Everybody hear me? Test, test.
Don't make me dance, people.
You may've heard.
We pushed our source code out onto the Net.
Yeah! BARKSDALE: So our code is the world's code and the world, the world is gonna help us build the most kick ass browser anyone has ever seen.
Yeah! BARKSDALE: You guys have fun tonight.
You deserve it.
CLARK: How serious? BARKSDALE: Serious enough I'm telling you about it.
Hey, Eugene.
You crushed it.
Way to go.
There are a million details that would have to fall into place, but it's within the realm of possibility.
CLARK: I must be having visions.
Marc Andreessen at a social gathering? BARKSDALE: Keep an eye out overhead for the flying pigs.
MARC: I figured with a couple seniors at the party, - it shouldn't get too raucous.
- CLARK: He just called us old.
BARKSDALE: No, I think he means like high school seniors, like we're the cool ones the kids wanna hang out with.
MARC: Oh, yeah, sure.
CLARK: So Jim was just telling me about the BARKSDALE: I actually, I haven't told Marc yet.
- MARC: Told Marc what? - BARKSDALE: You know what, not here.
Let's go.
Follow me.
ED: Todd and Steph had created a lot of value in the company by putting themselves out there.
Much like a Richard Branson is associated with all things Virgin or a Steve Jobs with all things Apple, that's how they were and that's how they saw themselves.
STEPHAN: CNN asked if they could do a full-fledged documentary for this new show they had, called CNN Movers.
It would require them to follow Todd and I into our private lives - and document a typical day, or week.
- TODD: See you Monday.
- STEPHAN: See you Monday.
- And our publicity team said, "That seems like a pretty good opportunity, we should do it.
" Great, alright, let's do this.
ED: The CNN piece would probably be the low point of the whole experience.
STEPHAN: They followed Todd separately to see what his personal life was like, they followed him out to the Hamptons, where he had some friends over and he was doing - a barbecue and playing badminton.
- Oh! TODD: I played badminton once in my life, you know, a really thoughtful producer set up a badminton game.
But we entered into the piece willingly, it was not like we were coerced.
STEPHAN: And they asked like, "Hey Steph, we've heard about you wanting to go out and party, and you love the nightlife, can we follow you out to one of your clubs?" "Sounds like a great idea.
" They lifted some audio that they'd recorded off camera, where I was using total sarcasm and being facetious.
Got the girl.
Got the money.
Now I'm ready to live a disgusting frivolous life.
And I said it off camera because I would never wanna say something like that, and I don't live that life.
But it played perfectly over the scene of me dancing in a nightclub in my vinyl pants.
Got the girl.
Got the money.
Now I'm ready to live a disgusting frivolous lifestyle.
It was a total cheap shot.
TODD: That piece was very damaging.
ED: It aired at a time when the stock price was not doing well and this just sorta threw gas on the fire.
STEPHAN: Dude, you know they took it out of context! TODD: You created the context! Seriously, how hard would it have been to have not said it at all?! How hard would it have been to, I don't know, stay at home and rent a movie with your girlfriend?! STEPHAN: I didn't want to rent a movie with my girlfriend.
I wanted to go to a club! - TODD: In plastic pants.
- STEPHAN: Vinyl.
And yeah.
So what? I'm a 25-year-old, working my ass off, and I wanted to blow off a little some steam in the pants of my choosing.
TODD: You are not just some 25-year-old, Steph.
We are running a billion-dollar company.
And you played right into the narrative that maybe we shouldn't be.
STEPHAN: I said I was sorry.
I don't know what else you want from me? TODD: I want this not to have happened.
- What is that? - STEPHAN: I'm pressing the backspace key.
- It should just be a few more seconds.
- TODD: Great.
You're hilarious.
STEPHAN: They wanted to see my life, and so I showed them my life.
And in my life I make mistakes.
Because I'm not a robot.
TODD: Oh, with the implication being that I am a robot.
STEPHAN: We've gotten millions of dollars of free press.
You think it's because of your painfully careful, prepackaged answers? You think CNN even runs the piece if it's just us sitting around eating cheeseburgers? But hey if you want me to be boring and safe, we can try the Todd Krizelman plan for a while.
TODD: Screw you.
STEPHAN: You know, when we'd met Michael Egan, I think we had like maybe a million users a month.
By that summer when CNN was running, we were in the, maybe 15 million users a month.
And we peaked at around 20 million users a month.
So it was going up and up and up.
And our ad sales were going up and up and up.
And our revenues went again from like a million to five, six million bucks when we went public to $20 million in 1999.
We sparked off Internet IPO mania.
So hundreds of Internet companies went public and if an investor can choose between staying in a stock they've already been in a while or going for the next new hot thing, they do.
Our stock just started sliding, and sliding and sliding, and so when you put on a CNN piece like that that's more controversial and your stock price is still going down, that was the problem.
SEAN: I mean, he's amazing.
And I'm like I've got to meet this guy.
Anyway, turns out he's 16, living in rural Georgia.
TARA: Okay, I'm not crazy about where this story is headed.
(coughing).
SEAN: He's been contributing to the open source.
- You knew that.
- JEFF: What's going on? TARA: All hands meeting.
JEFF: You sound terrible.
TARA: Bronchitis again.
It's almost as if 90 hour work weeks aren't conducive to good health.
JEFF: Wasn't the all-hands meeting supposed to be next week? SEAN: I think they were worried Tara might be dead by then.
(coughing).
(phone rings).
BARKSDALE: Hello, Marc.
MARC: Oh, Jim, hi sorry, I didn't mean to call you.
I hit the wrong speed dial.
BARKSDALE: No worries.
I made a mistake once.
MARC: I doubt that.
BARKSDALE: Hey, you know, it gets kinda lonely for me up there, if you want to join me this morning.
MARC: I have errands I should run.
You got this.
I'll be in later.
BARKSDALE: Alright, ok, I will see you then.
JEFF: Tell me if you heard this one: Why do Java programmers wear glasses? TARA: I don't know, Jeff.
Why do Java programmers wear glasses? JEFF: Because they don't "C.
" Like "C," the programming language, but also "see" like "see.
" - SEAN: No, I get it, I get it.
- TARA: I just didn't laugh because I was worried it would hurt my throat.
WOMAN: Such a stupid joke.
I love stupid jokes.
SEAN: How come all the girls like you? (coughing).
BARKSDALE: Hey, hey everybody, listen up.
Uh, late last night, we reached an agreement to sell the Netscape Communications Corporation to AOL of Dulles, Virginia.
It was all their idea.
I mean, I didn't go to them and say, do you want to buy our company, uh, Steve called and said he wanted to talk to me about something and we got together, and he said he wanted to buy our company.
STEVE: I met with Jim Barksdale, multiple times, you know, 8-10 times, over a number of months and ultimately we strategically saw a way to align our interests.
WOMAN: We think it's positive for the combined company.
It takes AOL which is historically been just on the consumer side - onto the business side.
- BARKSDALE: I think the AOL team liked what we were and they liked our brand name and they liked our image in the market.
REPORTER (over TV): American Online says combining the web audience of AOL and Netscape's net center will let consumers and businesses do more on the web.
It would be the Internet's first mega-deal.
STEVE: When we announced the acquisition of Netscape, I think the value was about $4 billion.
REPORTER (over TV): The two companies are eyeball magnets on the web.
AOL and Netscape's net center capture top web ratings and analysts say the combination would be formidable.
CLARK: I began my exit process right then, I said, "I'm out.
" I wasn't interested in being part of AOL.
BARKSDALE: I thought it was a good deal.
I still do.
REPORTER: Just three years after Netscape's IPO served as the Internet's Big Bang, a whimper of an end to its independence.
CLARK: Just not clear we would have survived at all, so it was really the right thing to do.
BARKSDALE: We had the best people, the smartest, bestest folks you could imagine.
I loved 'em all and I thought it was the best thing to do for them and for the investors.
REPORTER (over TV): The deal would seem to carve up the company that had it all just three years ago.
A hot product, wunderkind co-founder Mark Andreessen and a sizzling IPO.
MARC: What? You think I should be there.
You think I'm this cold-hearted bastard who doesn't even care enough about the end of his own company to show up on the big day, that I'm someone incapable of feeling anything in this moment, in any moment.
Yeah, okay, that's certainly a plausible explanation.
It's also plausible that creating this browser was the only thing that really mattered to me in my life, the only thing that made me feel alive, the thing that doesn't just define my work and career but is the living embodiment of everything I'm about.
Now I have to deal with losing it and I can't be there to watch it die.
Or maybe I don't want everyone to see how excited I am about the sale.
This is a big win at this point.
Who cares that it's AOL? I'm parachuting out with hundreds of millions of dollars.
So which one is it? TARA: An unbelievable amount of effort, with the creation of Mozilla as an open-source entity and that was supposed to be the thing that allowed us to turn the corner.
And then when the AOL acquisition was announced, it's like, "Oh, God," not only did it not work, we're getting bought by this company that we've maligned for the past three, four years? JEFF: This is messed up.
TARA: Yeah.
WOMAN: Totally.
TARA: I mean, that was, that was many nails in the coffin for a lot of people.
It was right about that time that I resigned.
Myself included, honestly.
I didn't have it in my anymore to fight the browser war, I was done, the soldier was done.
That's when we called it the Great Netscape Diaspora really began, when people started to leave.
The war was over.
What Netscape hoped to do was to save the company and to save the browser business and to try and win at least some battles in the browser war but it ended up not saving Netscape in the end.
For those of us who cared more about the browser and the technology and the ideals that we had about making something that changed the world, in that way we succeeded beyond what anybody could possibly consider success.
I got to be part of two truly amazing milestones in high-tech industry and I feel very grateful for that.
(phone rings).
MICHAEL: Paul! Hey Lee, it's Michael Fenne.
I see I missed a couple calls.
WISKOWSKI: 22.
You missed 22 calls, Michael.
MICHAEL: Oh, well, it's been a crazy day here as you can imagine, I do apologize, but we cannot argue with the results.
Unqualified success.
WISKOWSKI: You're joking, right? You're joking? MICHAEL: Okay fair enough, some people thought that Kiss was lip-synching, but they're legends, let's not judge them too harshly.
WISKOWSKI: That is not what I'm talking about.
Listen.
It didn't work, Michael.
iBash.
You didn't deliver on what you promised.
MICHAEL: Well, I have a holy host of people here who would argue otherwise.
Hey, what did y'all think of iBash?! Whooo! WISKOWSKI: Well I called around.
And no one could stream it.
- MICHAEL: Huh.
- WISKOWSKI: "Huh"? That's it? "Huh"? Ok.
What do your technical people have to say? The ones who handled the streaming? GARY: I told them that iBash could not possibly be distributed over the Internet with Pixelon's technology.
MICHAEL: Hey, these friends that you called, now any of 'em have a T1 line? - 'Cause download speeds on T1 lines - WISKOWSKI: Friends in Chicago, friends in Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas, a friend whose office overlooks the Jumbotron in Times Square.
Nobody, nobody saw a goddamn thing, Michael! Nobody! MICHAEL: Lee, did I do something to offend you? WISKOWSKI: Yeah, you spent $12 million of my money - on something that didn't work.
- MICHAEL: $12 million of your money? WISKOWSKI: Just admit it didn't work.
Just admit it.
MICHAEL: Even if what you're saying is true, which I'm not saying it is, but let's just imagine that you're totally right, computer screens, the Pixelon player just a blank screen, people staring at it, nothing happening, complete and utter failure, did not work.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
Ok? What matters is it could work and someday it will work.
That's the moment we're in, this glorious technological revolution.
It's what people are hoping for.
The promise for a better tomorrow.
That's what we're selling.
Ok? Fortunately for us, it did work.
GARY: They faked it.
It was a scam.
iBash failed.
MICHAEL: It's just the icing on the cake.
Alright? Let's talk next week.
MARK: What entrepreneur is dumb enough to spend all of their money on a party when their technology is not ready and they need to get their technology ready, 10, $15 million, are you kidding me? - MICHAEL: Hey, not leaving already, are you? - DAN: I'm not much of a night owl.
- MICHAEL: How'd you like The Who? - DAN: They were incredible.
So you must be pleased with how the day went.
MICHAEL: Absolutely.
Nothing but blue skies ahead.
I can see blue skies on the horizon Feeling like this is my day
AOL EXECUTIVE: If we combine our strengths, we can build a firewall against Microsoft.
BARKSDALE: Very next day, AOL announced a deal with Microsoft.
They bundled Internet Explorer into their operating system.
- MARC: How long? - BARKSDALE: Three or four quarters before it blows up our bottom line.
WISKOWSKI: You can stop selling.
We're in.
DAN: This guy who has been calling himself Michael Fenne is really David Kim Stanley, a fugitive of the law.
MICHAEL: iBash! This is the biggest star-studded musical event ever! BARRY: I was thinking, we should do a test run.
- MICHAEL: Why would I do that? - BARRY: To find out if there are any kinks and, if there are, iron them out.
STEPHAN: These IPOs are becoming this rite of passage that legitimizes these companies.
How great will it be when we can just get back to running our company.
TODD: 30 million more in capital to play with? - Pretty great.
- STEPHAN: Are we going to price? - Is this thing going through or what? - BANKER: Yes.
Yep we are! PIT BOSS: 87! 87! (CELEBRATING).
Get that money It'll make you scream and shout Get that money Yeah that's what it's all about You like it baby Get that money It'll make you scream and shout Get that money Yeah that's what it's all about Get that money You know you like it baby Give it to me Money Get that money Oh GUY: You suck! DARRIN: On the day of the IPO, Globe.
com stock hit $97 a share.
Two months later, it had dropped to $22.
Now what dramatic misstep had Paternot and Krizelman made? They hadn't.
That was just the nature of the market during the boom.
Valuations were all over the map.
Was TheGlobe ever actually a billion-dollar company? I don't know, but I will tell you this: the same people that love you for turning their $2000 into $200,000 are singing a different tune when those winnings go bye-bye.
MAN: Bye-bye.
DARRIN: You're no longer the whiz kids who with drive and ingenuity built something revolutionary.
You're the sons of bitches destroying their nest egg.
You see, that's the deal with playing on the big stage.
The whole world is watching.
Rooting for you to reach those magical heights, and waiting for you to slip up, praying you do, and then cursing you for it.
But all you can do is keep on dancing and hope your next move will send you shooting right back up them pop charts.
(CHOKES).
Lemme go, lemme go, lemme go! Hey! Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey! What are you doing, son?! Square your shoulders.
Make sure your back foot is perpendicular with your throwing hand.
You ready? Launch.
Oh-oh, whoo! From now on, that's how you throw! I had 3000 shares of Globe.
com stock.
BARKSDALE: DOJ moving ahead with the anti-trust, that was uh, a good thing.
But it didn't change the fact that we lost $88 million that quarter.
Had to lay off a fifth of the work force.
About 500 people.
ROSEANNE: This idea that we actually had to let people go, that after this crazy growth, quarter after quarter after quarter, that we'd come to this place where it just was what had to happen? TARA: These are people that you have spent 80% of your waking hours with.
BARKSDALE: We were not selling as much as we had hoped to sell.
And we had hired a lot of people and we had to lay some people off.
You hate to do that.
You just hate it, but it was necessary.
It was the only way to stay pushing ahead.
REPORTER: Mr.
Barksdale, do you anticipate more layoffs? REPORTER: What do you say to investors panicking about the stock price? REPORTER: How much more market share can Netscape afford to lose? BARKSDALE: How you all doin'? ROSEANNE: There's a ton of interest still.
The sales people are out selling like crazy, their phones are still ringing like crazy, we're expanding all over the world, so we're just trying to fend off the ideas that we are dying, trying to project a very positive image.
REPORTER: Is Netscape dead? BARKSDALE: You all take care now.
ROSEANNE: There's me personally who thought, "Oh God! This is lookin' bad.
" And then there's me VP of Corporate Communications who said, "Okay! What are we doing next?" They're gonna ask, but let's not get stuck in the whys and the what fors of how we got here.
We need to be projecting confidence about Netscape's future.
MARC: Happy, peppy, bursting with love, got it.
ROSEANNE: Yeah, so as much as you can, let's just guide them toward our strategy.
MARC: Are we going to have enough embalming fluid? ROSEANNE: Netscape as the Comeback Kid, - how we're re-emerging - MARC: You know, to get the dead body ready for viewing, so everyone can ooh and ahh about how lifelike everything looks.
Look at the corpse! ROSEANNE: For crying out loud, Marc! Really, please.
MARC: It's just a joke, Rosanne.
Lighten up.
ROSEANNE: I'm just trying to do my job.
MARC: Which apparently entails talking through every single detail - till we're blue in the face.
- ROSEANNE: Maybe if you'd shut up with your cute remarks, we could have been done ten minutes ago.
MARC: Maybe if we didn't have this meeting at all, I could have been home sleeping.
ROSEANNE: I'm so sorry I dragged you out of bed at the crack of 10:30.
MARC: Hey, I was here last night until 4, okay? BARKSDALE: Alright, alright, that's enough.
This is not a position any of us want to be in.
I mean, emotions are running high.
We've got the layoffs, the hit on the stock price.
Jim Clark personally lost a billion dollars last month.
Rumor is he might even have to downsize to a smaller island.
CLARK: I feel like you're minimizing my hardship.
BARKSDALE: C'mon, I'd never do that.
MARC: Rosanne, I've done this hundreds of times.
I know what to say and what not to say.
- ROSEANNE: Great.
- BARKSDALE: Ok, look, no tree grows all the way to heaven, but we got a lot of life left in us here.
This is a helluva tree.
We just need to trim away some of the unhealthy branches and get this thing strong and growing again.
- CLARK: Even if we end up selling it for the lumber.
- BARKSDALE: Ok, Jim.
- CLARK: Nobody's shelling out for a dead tree.
- BARKSDALE: Jim, Jim, c'mon, what I'm saying is, you know, stay civil, get back to work.
ROSEANNE: But we also have to be clearer about what our strategy is going forward, because if indeed we cannot compete on the browser, then we have to convince people that there's some other reason to come to Netscape.
That was our job.
DAN: iBash was Pixelon's plan to make the biggest splash in a world where dot-coms were constantly trying to outdo each other.
BRIAN: Everybody's vying for eyeballs, trying to get people to pay attention so what better way to get somebody to pay attention to you than throw this big, crazy party in Vegas.
MARK: I've been investing in technology companies my entire adult life.
There are certain red flags that I always look for that tell me the company's a scam, and probably the biggest one, the most enormous red flag for any potential investment is throwing a party and the bigger the party, the bigger the scam.
No exceptions.
Pixelon is the poster boy for the bigger the party, the bigger the scam.
MICHAEL: Ok, so he's doing a set in this little club in Greenwich Village.
And it's early in his career, he's still going by his birth name, Anthony Benedetto.
So he nearly pees his drawers, because who's in the audience that night? Mr.
Bob Hope.
- TOADY: Bob Hope the comedian? - MICHAEL: No, Bob Hope the plumber.
And he was taking in a show with his butcher friend, Bing Crosby, and Elizabeth Taylor the court stenographer.
I'm just joshin' with ya, Don.
Of course Bob is wowed by the show, and he asks Tony to tour with him, but he says, "Kid, Anthony Benedetto's just too long for the marquee.
How 'bout we call you Tony Bennett?" So Tony may have left his heart in San Francisco, but he left his name in Greenwich Village.
JOYCE: I can't believe that your husband had drinks with Tony Bennett.
MICHAEL: Hey due diligence.
I had to make sure that those pipes were still in primo condition.
SHEILA: You think everyone can meet him after the show tomorrow? MICHAEL: Oh, sure, I'll give him a call first thing once we arrive.
PAUL: To iBash! TOADY: To Michael Fenne! MICHAEL: To God.
ALL: To God.
BARKSDALE: There was a movement going on in that time, about how if you had open source with many people contributing to a software product, you had a much better chance of developing something great, than if you just had a few people working on it.
We put the Netscape browser up as an open-source contribution to this movement.
TARA: Do not toy with me.
JEFF: I'm not toying with you.
I never toy with people.
SEAN: It would require a level of cleverness I wouldn't normally associate with him.
BARKSDALE: And the open source effort, the software was called Mozilla.
TARA: Open source? Seriously? SEAN: I'm telling you, it's happening.
TARA: They said, alright, we have this crazy idea that's gonna help us compete, we're going to release the open source of the browser and get open source developers to help us.
SPENCE: The Net was used mainly by engineers, researchers, some companies, universities to share information, or one team has figured out.
- to allow everyone to benefit from what one person, - JEFF: My famous chicken salad.
People ask for the recipe all the time, and I'm always like it's none of your beeswax.
But that was the old me.
New me is like, you want the recipe, it's yours.
I'll even do you one better: you have ideas on how to improve on my creation, go for it.
Fontina cheese.
Nice.
- Cherry mostarda.
- JEFF: No clue what that is, but looks good.
I definitely know what that is.
SPENCE: We were all about this history of open collaboration and creation and research.
- JEFF: Ok.
- SPENCE: We understood the value of sharing and the Internet was really all about that.
JEFF: Ok.
So maybe I'd have thought to add at least some of those ingredients on my own, but even if I did, it's not like I have a huge team working on this and I don't have time to fry the bacon, make the mostara, go to the store and get the cheese.
I'm hungry now! So with the help of this outside community of chicken salad aficionados, I have this tasty looking sandwich in a fraction of the time.
Basically, that's open source.
SPENCE: Choosing to open source the browser was a perfect maneuver in my mind.
JEFF: So you're thinking, great, he's got a delicious sandwich, but everyone knows the recipe, what's he gettin' out of this? Well, a tasty sandwich is gonna attract eyeballs.
And while checking out your sando, those eyeballs may take notice of some of the other things you have to offer.
WOMAN: Any chance I could have a bite of that sandwich? JEFF: Sure.
Should we eat it Lady and the Tramp style? WOMAN: Ew.
JEFF: Obviously they have to like the other things you're offering.
ROSEANNE: To do something like that, that 80 million, 90 million people would be using? That's certainly unprecedented at the time.
SPENCE: Because it was sorta flying in the face of what Microsoft was doing and what, you know, Wall Street and the press understood what was supposed to happen.
ROSEANNE: You know, that's what we did in releasing our initial browser back in, you know, '94! And here we were again, it felt like returning to our audacious roots, you know? And I loved that.
SPENCE: It paved the way for the Mozilla project now, and Firefox, the Chrome team from Google, definitely influenced, everything has been influenced by it.
DAN: My job at the The Industry Standard was a reporter.
I first met Michael Fenne when iBash happened.
MICHAEL: We have this proprietary technology.
Revolutionary technology, $28 million in the bank because our friends at Advanced Equities, out there in Chicago, they recognize that Pixelon has built a pipeline to the future.
And it struck me: hey, we can't keep hiding our light under a bushel.
iBash is our candlestick and it's gonna giveth light all over the world.
DAN: I'd really love to hear more about what brought you to this point.
You know, how does a kid from Appalachia end up a tech pioneer? You are from Appalachia, right? MICHAEL: What makes you say that? DAN: I had a girlfriend whose family was from there.
- Your accent.
- MICHAEL: What accent? We've got the biggest names in all of music, nobody's gonna give a tinker's cuss who Michael Fenne is.
Hey Paul, c'mere, I want you to meet Dan Goodin.
He's a reporter doing a story on our rise to glory.
DAN: And saying that the reason that he's doing it is so that he can make this major splash and get, get all of this attention.
And yet, he's meeting a reporter, and he's, he doesn't wanna answer any questions about his personal life.
He doesn't want any pictures of him taken.
And he seems not at all comfortable being the topic of conversation.
MICHAEL: Paul here is our newly christened CEO.
He still has a few glass shards on his shirt sleeve where I smashed him with a champagne bottle.
Alright, can you go check on how my wife and see how she's getting on with those kids? - PAUL: I'm on it.
- MICHAEL: Thank you, Paul.
Yeah, we invited a group of disadvantaged children to iBash.
Leann Rimes, she helped spearhead it.
Lovely young lady.
And beautiful voice.
She, oh, wait, are you more of a Who fan? - DAN: I love The Who.
- MICHAEL: I knew it.
I knew you loved The Who.
GARY: At some point it was announced that The Who had been paid $2 million to reunite.
MICHAEL: It's gotta give you goose bumps knowing that in a few short hours Pete Townshend's gonna be out there windmilling his guitar, and you're gonna have a front row seat.
DAN: Well, I mean, everyone with an Internet connection is going to have a front row seat, right? MICHAEL: Yeah.
Hey.
C'mon.
DAN: Is there a number Pixelon's banking on? Millions? Tens of millions? MICHAEL: Could be a billion.
STAGE MANAGER: Sir! You shouldn't be here.
Did you hear me? DAN: That's Michael Fenne, that's Michael Fenne.
STAGE MANAGER: Well, Mr.
Fenne, I'm so sorry, I didn't MICHAEL: I, it, honest mistake.
Don't give it a second thought.
Hey, I should really personally go check on Leann and Sheila, ok? We'll talk later.
DAN: Ok.
STEPHAN: There was a motto, uh, I believe at Netscape which the CEO, a termed he coined called GBF, get big fast.
- CLARK: Get big fast.
- TODD: Get big fast.
ED: No matter what the expense, get big.
CLARK: If you can get big, then it's harder for someone else - to take you down.
- ED: Get big fast.
STEPHAN: Doesn't matter how much you're losing, get big fast, be the biggest.
ED: Get bigger, get bigger, buy things, and so we did that.
TODD: We started doing some acquisitions.
ED: Now we were managing a public company, you know, with a nine-figure valuation.
We needed to feed that valuation, I don't know what we spent, a couple hundred million dollars maybe on acquisitions.
TODD: We started to get into the video game business.
STEPHAN: It was like, ah, gaming! We went and bought a whole network of gaming sites: Games Domain.
Happy Puppy.
Hey, if you buy a company that has hundreds of millions in revenues, that brings stability to your business, that makes that billion-dollar valuation we have more real.
TODD: We were trying to keep up to prove that the valuation we had been given was something that was actually deserved.
STEPHAN: Mike Egan was like, hey Todd, you know this guy who runs Sunglass Hut.
They don't have an Internet strategy yet, let's create one for them and have Sunglass Hut.
Roll in vitamins are the future, there's Vitamins.
com now, it's a thing, why don't we buy Vitamins.
com.
If you acquire something with huge revenues that's successful, that helps.
But if you buy the wrong stuff, we were getting caught up in chasing after the next new new thing as well.
And it was a massive distraction from our core focus.
ED: Sort of the nature of the beast.
You're changing ownership, you're changing the way things are managed.
STEPHAN: When you're on to a winning formula, focus like crazy, double down, get better and better at that one thing.
TODD: Focus on the original business.
ED: You're trying new things, you're combining things, and sometimes uh, those things don't work.
JEFF: Why does this keep crashing?! What am I missing? Okay, think.
Think.
- MARC: Have you checked for segfaults? - JEFF: Duh, of course I checked for segf Hi.
Did you wanna? Here, I'll just, uh.
I'm Jeff, by the way.
WOMAN: Brought to you by Pixelon.
com, first full screen, full motion TV quality Internet broadcaster.
See more of Pixelon's iBash artist performances and backstage outtakes online at Pixelon.
com.
DAVID SPADE: Hold onto your trackballs, people, there's a lot more show coming right now.
BRIAN: The goal of iBash was to have this huge audacious launch party in Vegas.
DAN: You know, The Who, the Dixie Chicks, Tony Bennett, Kiss, LeAnn Rimes.
BRIAN: Faith Hill, and I don't even remember you know all, all the names that were out there and quite frankly some names I don't even, I'd never even heard of before.
SHEILA: Those kids, those poor kids.
Leann, she said I could call her Leann, she was talking with this one girl, dad's in jail, mother's an addict, I'm sorry.
Oh.
Oh, thank you.
DARRIN: I know, months have passed in the other stories and yet it is still the same day here.
Hmm.
So do you want to geek out about the laws of time and space? Or do you want to know what's going to happen with iBash?! iBash! iBash! C'mon! I don't want it back.
TOADY: Uh, Michael.
With the IPO just around the corner, listen, with the IPO, the IPO, just around the corner there, uh, and only so many shares to be had in a friends and family round, everyone, everyone's gonna be coming out of the woodwork claiming to be a dear-old friend of Michael Fenne, Mike Fenne, Mike Fenne.
I don't wanna put any pressure on you, ok? The last, the last thing I wanna do is put any pressure on you, but, you know, I think I need 200,000.
- JOYCE: I knew I recognized him.
- TOADY: Think maybe 200 thou.
Mike Fenne, Mike Fenne.
DAN: It, of course, was not known at the time that, you know, Michael Fenne was not in fact Michael Fenne but was in fact somebody named David Kim Stanley and he had launched this startup under completely false pretenses.
CREW: David! David! Mr.
Fenne? Sorry to bother you but someone really wants to get ahold of you.
MICHAEL: Oh.
Thank you.
TOADY: So, I don't know, what do you think? MICHAEL: What? ED: CNBC wasn't what it is today, but it was growing and they were doing a lot of shows about, "How could this be?" "Look at these young rich Internet gazillionaires!" "How can this company be worth more than General Motors?!" STEPHAN: We had people in the message boards that were like trying to short our stock, trying to pump our stocks, saying all sorts of (bleep).
ED: This story of rich, good-looking gazillionaire Internet kid had played.
And now they were looking for the other side of that story.
VOICEMAIL: You have 10 messages.
FEMALE (over phone): I hate you! I hate you! I read this in the message boards, everybody hates the founders! STEPHAN: There was a voicemail and on it was a woman who started just begging and saying, I put in my life savings, I think a couple hundred thousand dollars into TheGlobe and it's all gone.
For like a week this woman left us these voice mails of desperation and she couldn't understand where her money had gone.
- She thought we had it.
- VOICEMAIL: You have 8 messages.
FEMALE (over phone): I lost all my money! Please, please, pay me back all my money, and I will be fine! Pay it back! Pay it back! (bleep) you! STEPHAN: And she was getting more and more frantic and screaming on the phone and threatening us and it ended up with her yelling like, "I'm gonna kill you, I will kill you if you don't give me my money back.
" FEMALE (over phone): People keep saying they want you to die! Well you should die! I'm gonna kill you! I will kill you if I don't get my money back! ASSISTANT: The team from Azazz is here.
STEPHAN: I think I'd much rather stay and listen to this message again.
FEMALE (over phone): (bleep) you! I want my money back.
STEPHAN: There'd been on the news a story of a day trader going in and killing all his colleagues at work.
It was like a thing now, that people were losing their (bleep) and going and killing people.
So Todd and I were like, are you (bleep) me, we have someone who wants to kill us now, are we going to have to get security here, what's going on? JENN: Azazz? That's the online retailer? STEPHAN: I don't even know why we're in retail.
I mean I know why: Amazon got huge, or a bunch of analysts decided that Amazon got huge, so we of course have to plunk down $45 million on an e-commerce.
We sent them nearly 250,000 users a month but, their sales have barely moved.
They act like they're these avant-garde entrepreneurs and we're the old Wall Street dudes from Trading Places.
"Good morning, Randolph.
" "Good Morning, Mortimer.
" Hey, we were you like last year? We're actually younger than you.
You know, Yahoo would have totally dropped the hammer on them.
And I don't know, maybe that's what we should have done, but is that even who I am, what I want my leadership style to be? JENN: Hi.
STEPHAN: Sorry.
- I'm being totally.
- JENN: No, you don't need to.
It's okay.
I mean, it's not okay, but only because you're not okay.
STEPHAN: I just, I feel like a failure.
JENN: A failure? Yeah, yeah, that tracks.
You're 25 and co-CEO of a company you founded, a company that posted the largest first day gain of any IPO ever.
Plus, you're dating this super-smart, extremely cool, astoundingly beautiful woman.
- STEPHAN: And modest.
- JENN: Yes, for sure, by far the most modest person in all of human history.
(phones ringing).
MICHAEL: Hi, this is Michael Fenne.
EMPLOYEE: Mr.
Fenne, I'm so sorry to bother you, but the phones here are ringing off the hook.
People can't seem to access our live feed.
We called the encoders, but they said they're just uploading edited clips for the site, and no one seems to know who's actually handling the live simulcast.
We were hoping maybe you knew what the problem might be? MICHAEL: Why are you lying to me? EMPLOYEE: Why am I, I'm not, - which part do you think I'm lying about? - MICHAEL: Lying is a mortal sin.
Didn't your parents teach you that? Well one way or another, you're gonna learn.
When I get back, you're gonna come up to my office and I'm gonna give you a whooping.
- Now what'd you say your name was again? - EMPLOYEE: I didn't.
It's - it's Brad.
- MICHAEL: Bradley.
SHEILA: Hey! Faith Hill's about to go on.
Some of us are gonna head out into the audience.
MICHAEL: Mhm.
SHEILA: You know a lot of people say I look like Faith Hill.
MICHAEL: You're much prettier.
SHEILA: Aren't you just the sweetest thing? - So come on, we only have a few minutes.
- MICHAEL: Come on where? SHEILA: To watch Faith Hill.
You're coming, right? - You have to see her live.
- MICHAEL: What the hell is wrong with you?! I am trying to pull off the biggest event in Internet history and all I ask is that you let me do my job and not embarrass me! But there you are crying about Leann Rimes! Comparing yourself to Faith Hill.
Chasing after every celebrity with your autograph book like a stupid little schoolgirl! - SHEILA: I just thought - MICHAEL: You just thought.
Well don't just think! I swear, Sheila, I swear! Act like you've been here before! DIRECTOR: Phil, show me a preview of B and 4-A.
Someone get a chair for Mr.
Fenne? GARY: It turns out that streaming media over the Internet requires a fairly robust technological capability and infrastructure.
- DIRECTOR: Happy with what you're seeing? - MICHAEL: I am.
GARY: We had a venue, we had acts.
What we didn't have was the ability to actually show it.
DIRECTOR: In 3, 2 TECHNICIAN: I know who you are.
MICHAEL: You do? DAN: Michael Fenne was a completely fabricated identity.
Did not exist.
Michael Fenne was an elaborate cover for a fugitive from the law, David Kim Stanley.
MICHAEL: I'm Michael Fenne.
I'm Michael Fenne.
Hi, I'm Michael Fenne.
Michael Fenne.
Hi, I'm Mike Fenne.
Michael Fenne at your service.
David Kim Stanley? What? I'm Michael Fenne.
I'm Michael.
Fenne.
I'm (bleep) Michael! SHEILA: I don't know if you had a chance to see any of it, but Faith Hill sang, "This Kiss," ah, which is my absolute favorite.
She also sang "Breathe" and "The Way You Love Me.
" Anyway she was amazing! MICHAEL: I knew she would be.
What did I tell you? SHEILA: You told me she'd be amazing.
So should we go back to the party? MICHAEL: It's like you're reading my mind.
JANET: The Justice Department has charged Microsoft with engaging in anti-competitive and exclusionary practices designed to maintain its monopoly in personal computer operating systems and attempting to extend that monopoly to Internet browser software TARA: Hey, what's the ? SEAN: The government's now going after Microsoft with both barrels.
TARA: Cool.
I also have breaking news.
It's about Mozilla and the mountain of compiler errors still in the two and a half million lines of code we're racing the clock to finish.
JANET: No firm should be permitted to use its monopoly power to keep out competitors or to spurn innovations.
TARA: We're in a hurry.
We wanna get this done in Q1.
We said, 1998, Q1, that means March 31.
We have to release the source by the end of March, no slips, get it done.
And right up until the last second we were working on it.
It was insane.
SEAN: Seriously? - Yes.
Yes! - Whoo.
Yeah! Whooo! TARA: When we released the open source code, it was super exciting.
We sat there and watched the downloads off the FTP servers.
We were not sure if anybody was gonna wanna download it.
But, there were downloads all over the place.
It was amazing.
It was something that we could feel strongly about.
Like oh my God, nobody's done this before.
It's kind of like Netscape part 2.
Yeah! BARKSDALE: Is this working, can you hear me? Everybody hear me? Test, test.
Don't make me dance, people.
You may've heard.
We pushed our source code out onto the Net.
Yeah! BARKSDALE: So our code is the world's code and the world, the world is gonna help us build the most kick ass browser anyone has ever seen.
Yeah! BARKSDALE: You guys have fun tonight.
You deserve it.
CLARK: How serious? BARKSDALE: Serious enough I'm telling you about it.
Hey, Eugene.
You crushed it.
Way to go.
There are a million details that would have to fall into place, but it's within the realm of possibility.
CLARK: I must be having visions.
Marc Andreessen at a social gathering? BARKSDALE: Keep an eye out overhead for the flying pigs.
MARC: I figured with a couple seniors at the party, - it shouldn't get too raucous.
- CLARK: He just called us old.
BARKSDALE: No, I think he means like high school seniors, like we're the cool ones the kids wanna hang out with.
MARC: Oh, yeah, sure.
CLARK: So Jim was just telling me about the BARKSDALE: I actually, I haven't told Marc yet.
- MARC: Told Marc what? - BARKSDALE: You know what, not here.
Let's go.
Follow me.
ED: Todd and Steph had created a lot of value in the company by putting themselves out there.
Much like a Richard Branson is associated with all things Virgin or a Steve Jobs with all things Apple, that's how they were and that's how they saw themselves.
STEPHAN: CNN asked if they could do a full-fledged documentary for this new show they had, called CNN Movers.
It would require them to follow Todd and I into our private lives - and document a typical day, or week.
- TODD: See you Monday.
- STEPHAN: See you Monday.
- And our publicity team said, "That seems like a pretty good opportunity, we should do it.
" Great, alright, let's do this.
ED: The CNN piece would probably be the low point of the whole experience.
STEPHAN: They followed Todd separately to see what his personal life was like, they followed him out to the Hamptons, where he had some friends over and he was doing - a barbecue and playing badminton.
- Oh! TODD: I played badminton once in my life, you know, a really thoughtful producer set up a badminton game.
But we entered into the piece willingly, it was not like we were coerced.
STEPHAN: And they asked like, "Hey Steph, we've heard about you wanting to go out and party, and you love the nightlife, can we follow you out to one of your clubs?" "Sounds like a great idea.
" They lifted some audio that they'd recorded off camera, where I was using total sarcasm and being facetious.
Got the girl.
Got the money.
Now I'm ready to live a disgusting frivolous life.
And I said it off camera because I would never wanna say something like that, and I don't live that life.
But it played perfectly over the scene of me dancing in a nightclub in my vinyl pants.
Got the girl.
Got the money.
Now I'm ready to live a disgusting frivolous lifestyle.
It was a total cheap shot.
TODD: That piece was very damaging.
ED: It aired at a time when the stock price was not doing well and this just sorta threw gas on the fire.
STEPHAN: Dude, you know they took it out of context! TODD: You created the context! Seriously, how hard would it have been to have not said it at all?! How hard would it have been to, I don't know, stay at home and rent a movie with your girlfriend?! STEPHAN: I didn't want to rent a movie with my girlfriend.
I wanted to go to a club! - TODD: In plastic pants.
- STEPHAN: Vinyl.
And yeah.
So what? I'm a 25-year-old, working my ass off, and I wanted to blow off a little some steam in the pants of my choosing.
TODD: You are not just some 25-year-old, Steph.
We are running a billion-dollar company.
And you played right into the narrative that maybe we shouldn't be.
STEPHAN: I said I was sorry.
I don't know what else you want from me? TODD: I want this not to have happened.
- What is that? - STEPHAN: I'm pressing the backspace key.
- It should just be a few more seconds.
- TODD: Great.
You're hilarious.
STEPHAN: They wanted to see my life, and so I showed them my life.
And in my life I make mistakes.
Because I'm not a robot.
TODD: Oh, with the implication being that I am a robot.
STEPHAN: We've gotten millions of dollars of free press.
You think it's because of your painfully careful, prepackaged answers? You think CNN even runs the piece if it's just us sitting around eating cheeseburgers? But hey if you want me to be boring and safe, we can try the Todd Krizelman plan for a while.
TODD: Screw you.
STEPHAN: You know, when we'd met Michael Egan, I think we had like maybe a million users a month.
By that summer when CNN was running, we were in the, maybe 15 million users a month.
And we peaked at around 20 million users a month.
So it was going up and up and up.
And our ad sales were going up and up and up.
And our revenues went again from like a million to five, six million bucks when we went public to $20 million in 1999.
We sparked off Internet IPO mania.
So hundreds of Internet companies went public and if an investor can choose between staying in a stock they've already been in a while or going for the next new hot thing, they do.
Our stock just started sliding, and sliding and sliding, and so when you put on a CNN piece like that that's more controversial and your stock price is still going down, that was the problem.
SEAN: I mean, he's amazing.
And I'm like I've got to meet this guy.
Anyway, turns out he's 16, living in rural Georgia.
TARA: Okay, I'm not crazy about where this story is headed.
(coughing).
SEAN: He's been contributing to the open source.
- You knew that.
- JEFF: What's going on? TARA: All hands meeting.
JEFF: You sound terrible.
TARA: Bronchitis again.
It's almost as if 90 hour work weeks aren't conducive to good health.
JEFF: Wasn't the all-hands meeting supposed to be next week? SEAN: I think they were worried Tara might be dead by then.
(coughing).
(phone rings).
BARKSDALE: Hello, Marc.
MARC: Oh, Jim, hi sorry, I didn't mean to call you.
I hit the wrong speed dial.
BARKSDALE: No worries.
I made a mistake once.
MARC: I doubt that.
BARKSDALE: Hey, you know, it gets kinda lonely for me up there, if you want to join me this morning.
MARC: I have errands I should run.
You got this.
I'll be in later.
BARKSDALE: Alright, ok, I will see you then.
JEFF: Tell me if you heard this one: Why do Java programmers wear glasses? TARA: I don't know, Jeff.
Why do Java programmers wear glasses? JEFF: Because they don't "C.
" Like "C," the programming language, but also "see" like "see.
" - SEAN: No, I get it, I get it.
- TARA: I just didn't laugh because I was worried it would hurt my throat.
WOMAN: Such a stupid joke.
I love stupid jokes.
SEAN: How come all the girls like you? (coughing).
BARKSDALE: Hey, hey everybody, listen up.
Uh, late last night, we reached an agreement to sell the Netscape Communications Corporation to AOL of Dulles, Virginia.
It was all their idea.
I mean, I didn't go to them and say, do you want to buy our company, uh, Steve called and said he wanted to talk to me about something and we got together, and he said he wanted to buy our company.
STEVE: I met with Jim Barksdale, multiple times, you know, 8-10 times, over a number of months and ultimately we strategically saw a way to align our interests.
WOMAN: We think it's positive for the combined company.
It takes AOL which is historically been just on the consumer side - onto the business side.
- BARKSDALE: I think the AOL team liked what we were and they liked our brand name and they liked our image in the market.
REPORTER (over TV): American Online says combining the web audience of AOL and Netscape's net center will let consumers and businesses do more on the web.
It would be the Internet's first mega-deal.
STEVE: When we announced the acquisition of Netscape, I think the value was about $4 billion.
REPORTER (over TV): The two companies are eyeball magnets on the web.
AOL and Netscape's net center capture top web ratings and analysts say the combination would be formidable.
CLARK: I began my exit process right then, I said, "I'm out.
" I wasn't interested in being part of AOL.
BARKSDALE: I thought it was a good deal.
I still do.
REPORTER: Just three years after Netscape's IPO served as the Internet's Big Bang, a whimper of an end to its independence.
CLARK: Just not clear we would have survived at all, so it was really the right thing to do.
BARKSDALE: We had the best people, the smartest, bestest folks you could imagine.
I loved 'em all and I thought it was the best thing to do for them and for the investors.
REPORTER (over TV): The deal would seem to carve up the company that had it all just three years ago.
A hot product, wunderkind co-founder Mark Andreessen and a sizzling IPO.
MARC: What? You think I should be there.
You think I'm this cold-hearted bastard who doesn't even care enough about the end of his own company to show up on the big day, that I'm someone incapable of feeling anything in this moment, in any moment.
Yeah, okay, that's certainly a plausible explanation.
It's also plausible that creating this browser was the only thing that really mattered to me in my life, the only thing that made me feel alive, the thing that doesn't just define my work and career but is the living embodiment of everything I'm about.
Now I have to deal with losing it and I can't be there to watch it die.
Or maybe I don't want everyone to see how excited I am about the sale.
This is a big win at this point.
Who cares that it's AOL? I'm parachuting out with hundreds of millions of dollars.
So which one is it? TARA: An unbelievable amount of effort, with the creation of Mozilla as an open-source entity and that was supposed to be the thing that allowed us to turn the corner.
And then when the AOL acquisition was announced, it's like, "Oh, God," not only did it not work, we're getting bought by this company that we've maligned for the past three, four years? JEFF: This is messed up.
TARA: Yeah.
WOMAN: Totally.
TARA: I mean, that was, that was many nails in the coffin for a lot of people.
It was right about that time that I resigned.
Myself included, honestly.
I didn't have it in my anymore to fight the browser war, I was done, the soldier was done.
That's when we called it the Great Netscape Diaspora really began, when people started to leave.
The war was over.
What Netscape hoped to do was to save the company and to save the browser business and to try and win at least some battles in the browser war but it ended up not saving Netscape in the end.
For those of us who cared more about the browser and the technology and the ideals that we had about making something that changed the world, in that way we succeeded beyond what anybody could possibly consider success.
I got to be part of two truly amazing milestones in high-tech industry and I feel very grateful for that.
(phone rings).
MICHAEL: Paul! Hey Lee, it's Michael Fenne.
I see I missed a couple calls.
WISKOWSKI: 22.
You missed 22 calls, Michael.
MICHAEL: Oh, well, it's been a crazy day here as you can imagine, I do apologize, but we cannot argue with the results.
Unqualified success.
WISKOWSKI: You're joking, right? You're joking? MICHAEL: Okay fair enough, some people thought that Kiss was lip-synching, but they're legends, let's not judge them too harshly.
WISKOWSKI: That is not what I'm talking about.
Listen.
It didn't work, Michael.
iBash.
You didn't deliver on what you promised.
MICHAEL: Well, I have a holy host of people here who would argue otherwise.
Hey, what did y'all think of iBash?! Whooo! WISKOWSKI: Well I called around.
And no one could stream it.
- MICHAEL: Huh.
- WISKOWSKI: "Huh"? That's it? "Huh"? Ok.
What do your technical people have to say? The ones who handled the streaming? GARY: I told them that iBash could not possibly be distributed over the Internet with Pixelon's technology.
MICHAEL: Hey, these friends that you called, now any of 'em have a T1 line? - 'Cause download speeds on T1 lines - WISKOWSKI: Friends in Chicago, friends in Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas, a friend whose office overlooks the Jumbotron in Times Square.
Nobody, nobody saw a goddamn thing, Michael! Nobody! MICHAEL: Lee, did I do something to offend you? WISKOWSKI: Yeah, you spent $12 million of my money - on something that didn't work.
- MICHAEL: $12 million of your money? WISKOWSKI: Just admit it didn't work.
Just admit it.
MICHAEL: Even if what you're saying is true, which I'm not saying it is, but let's just imagine that you're totally right, computer screens, the Pixelon player just a blank screen, people staring at it, nothing happening, complete and utter failure, did not work.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
Ok? What matters is it could work and someday it will work.
That's the moment we're in, this glorious technological revolution.
It's what people are hoping for.
The promise for a better tomorrow.
That's what we're selling.
Ok? Fortunately for us, it did work.
GARY: They faked it.
It was a scam.
iBash failed.
MICHAEL: It's just the icing on the cake.
Alright? Let's talk next week.
MARK: What entrepreneur is dumb enough to spend all of their money on a party when their technology is not ready and they need to get their technology ready, 10, $15 million, are you kidding me? - MICHAEL: Hey, not leaving already, are you? - DAN: I'm not much of a night owl.
- MICHAEL: How'd you like The Who? - DAN: They were incredible.
So you must be pleased with how the day went.
MICHAEL: Absolutely.
Nothing but blue skies ahead.
I can see blue skies on the horizon Feeling like this is my day