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Technology Stocks : Paul Allen's Wired World -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RTev who wrote (25)	7/3/1999 3:39:00 AM
From: PatrickMark	Respond to of 361

RTev, MANY THANKS for a terrific post - great explanation of the Ticketmaster situation. Like this thread a lot - if I take a tangent the rest of you are not interested in, you'll let me know. Took a while, but during the read, the predominant theme for me was the personal relationship between Gates and Allen. I've wondered about that a lot, and I think it's pertinent to understanding some of the Wired World decisions. "As Allen and Gates, who has led Microsoft on his own for 14 years, began running in the same crowds, the odds grow greater that the two men will rub - or scrape - elbows." -(from the "confusing interactive worlds" article) When you think about it, over the many years since PA left Microsoft, he (PA) seems to have gone to great lengths to avoid competitive situations. At the same time, he has remained on the MSFT board and managed to keep the peace. Considering the substantial crossover of interest, this seems rather amazing, so I surmise that there is a lot of effort going into not treading on each other. "Allen puts working with people he likes and doing things he considers fun above making money. Money, he says, he has plenty of already." -(from the "sideman" article) I noticed during one game of the Portland-Utah series this year that Bill was Paul's guest at courtside and I remember how that struck me. They appeared to be having a good time and looked like "buds". (Wouldn?t you have loved to be a fly on the wall during the plane trip!) I work for a small, family-owned company run by two brothers . . . who attended Lakeside, many years ago. It has always been amazing to me (and I didn't make the connection until recently) how they still socialize almost exclusively with their high school friends (and they are in their 70?s). This is a VERY tight group. Now consider that Russell Horowitz also attended Lakeside. I suspect that most of us can extrapolate from our own (unexclusive) high school experiences that, in a business situation, we would give fellow alumni the first break (now multiply that by about 10, considering it is Lakeside). Maybe I'm dreaming, but I take a little comfort thinking that PA won't do anything AOLish to screw Russell over. This has been long-winded, I know, but my point is that I think these Lakeside ties are close to "blood ties" and may go a long way toward explaining certain aspects of the Wired World strategy. PM P.S. "When potential Seahawk buyer Paul Allen plays guitar with his amateur rock band, The Threads, he..." -is this good karma, or what? P.S.S. Gonna be great press for PA when they implode the Kingdome next year!