This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" by Ben Horowitz. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
Like this article? Sign up for a free trial here .
What was the history of the Netscape browser? What lead to its downfall? Where is Netscape now?
In Ben Horowitz’s book The Hard Thing About Hard Things, he talks about the rise and fall of the Netscape browser. What started as a promising venture fell apart when Microsoft entered their playing field.
Keep reading to learn about the history of the Netscape browser.
The Invention of Netscape
In 1994, while working at Lotus, Ben Horowitz learned about Mosaic, one of the first graphical web browsers. Before that point, the Internet was an esoteric technology used by academics and required abstruse commands to operate. In contrast, Mosaic was a graphical web browser that made the Internet accessible to everyday people. It gave Horowitz a glimpse of the future, and he was converted—he was wasting time working on anything else.
A few months later, Jim Clark (co-founder of Silicon Graphics) and the 22-year-old wunderkind Marc Andreessen (leader of the team that developed Mosaic) founded Netscape to capitalize on the innovation. Horowitz seized the chance to interview for a job at the new company.
A Brief Internet History
A brief history lesson: While today, we know the Internet to be the global innovation it is, in 1994 it was still in its infancy, nowhere near mainstream. Instead, software giants like Oracle and Microsoft were racing to build their own proprietary technologies to become the Information Superhighway of choice. The Internet was just one competitor in this battle.
The vision of Netscape was to make the web browser safer, easier to use, and more functional. In doing so, they would popularize the open Internet, freeing it from the shackles of a closed, proprietary corporate future.
Ben Horwitz and the Netscape Browser
Ben went through the interview process, and his final interview was with Marc Andreessen. The discussion was an intense exploration of Ben’s views on software and the future of the Internet. In turn, Andreessen revealed his impressively deep knowledge of computing history and his inspiring insights into technology. Horowitz thought Andreessen lived up to his wunderkind reputation and was convinced Netscape would shape the future.
Ben got the job to lead the Enterprise Web Server product line. The division sold two products: a web server selling for $1,200 and a secure web server (featuring Netscape’s new technology SSL) selling for $5,000. This was still a small part of the business—at the time, Netscape made most of its money by selling its browser to commercial users.
In August 1995, just 16 months since their founding, Netscape went public in their IPO. They priced their stock at $28 per share; at the close of their first trading day, the stock shot up to $58, giving Netscape a value of $3 billion. (While Netscape was unprofitable at the time—then a rarity in IPOs—investors were enthusiastic about how its revenues had doubled every quarter that year.) The IPO was a shock to the business world—the Internet was now a verifiable industry worth taking seriously.
———End of Preview———
Like what you just read? Read the rest of the world's best book summary and analysis of Ben Horowitz's "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" at Shortform .
Here's what you'll find in our full The Hard Thing About Hard Things summary :
- What it was like to head a company through the dotcom bubble and subsequent burst
- Why failing is normal
- How to build a good place to work
