Netscape Time

Having read “The New New Thing” and later having a chance to meet Jim Clark in person, I’ve decided to consume one more book on a topic of how starting pretty niche business in the old times looked like.

Clark book is also more important to me, since it’s written by himself for the readers, so lots of things are mentioned which have not been touched in “The New New Thing”.

Clark started from his interesting life, which is similar to many unique individuals. Not willing to study, he ended up in the navy, which in turn let him realize it’s not the future.

Starting from there, he explained his life through his personal perspective, his studies of maths and physics, through his PhD on graphics and finally, his appearance in California, Santa Cruz and finally Stanford.

Reader will learn why Silicon Graphics, being his first child, has lead him to have more and more motivation for his 2nd branch – Netscape.

The process of idea formation got explained, and how important role strong alcohols had in that :-P. This is followed by team recruiting and formation of the small enterprise.

Clark gives insights into startups in the peak times of the Silicon Valley.

I’d say it’s a must read book for the Internet entrepreneurs, as it gives some guidelines on the company operation in the eyes of soon-to-happen collapse, from times when Netspace was getting low on money.

Really enjoyed reading this one – highly recommended.