Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (82116)	10/27/1999 7:35:00 PM
From: Robert Rose	Respond to of 164684

Sorry if this has already been posted: --------- Posted at 9:05 p.m. PDT Tuesday, October 26, 1999 Start-up's all-star lineup Marc Andreessen stocks Loudcloud with Netscape veterans and ambition BY SCOTT HERHOLD Mercury News Staff Writer Less than two months after he left America Online Inc., Netscape Communications Corp. co-founder Marc Andreessen has unveiled his new start-up: Loudcloud Inc., a company stocked with Netscape veterans and aimed at supplying the plumbing for Internet companies. ``There's something pure about a start-up,' Andreessen said Tuesday when asked why he left a package of financial incentives at AOL to begin anew. ``You can basically define the way the world ought to be. Maybe you'll succeed, maybe you'll fail. But you know it's totally up to you.' The new company is led by some of the best technical minds from Netscape, which was acquired by AOL earlier this year. Among them are Loudcloud's chief executive officer, Ben Horowitz; chief technical officer, Tim Howes; vice president, In Sik Rhee; and director of marketing, Jason Rosenthal. The new venture reflects the continued exodus of talent from Netscape since the acquisition. Among others who have left are former CEO Jim Barksdale, now a venture capitalist; former chief counsel Roberta Katz, now the chief of the lobbying group Technet; and former Chief Financial Officer Peter Currie, who co-invests with Barksdale. Andreessen had accepted a post as chief technical officer with AOL last April. But over the last few months, it had become clear that the 28-year-old Silicon Valley wunderkind, one of the authors of the original Mosaic browser, was interested in striking out on his own. ``AOL was just a really bad fit for Marc,' said his friend Randy Komisar, who serves as a consultant and ``virtual CEO' for valley start-ups. ``He truly believes he has a vision and a position to lead the next wave of companies on the Internet, and AOL is in the media business. I think they were extremely generous to him, but Marc is ambitious, and doing nothing didn't suit him.' One of Loudcloud's intriguing aspects, at least for now, is that the Menlo Park company is self-funded, meaning that the founders are putting an undisclosed amount of their own money into the effort. Andreessen, however, did not rule out approaching venture capitalists later. Andreessen, who will serve as the company's chairman, was deliberately vague about what Loudcloud would do. But in broad terms, he suggested it would provide ``back office' technical help to Internet companies seeking to rapidly grow their Web sites. ``We plan to provide a set of technology and services that will help high-growth Internet companies get started and grow faster,' he said. ``We think everyone is pressed for time.' At least some of the company's direction can be gleaned from the expertise of its founding team: Howes is an expert on direct servers and Rhee is a developer of application servers from Netscape's Kiva division. The company has also lured Jonathan Heiliger, a 23-year-old who supervised the building of Frontier GlobalCenter's Web-hosting architecture, which is used by Yahoo Inc. All these functions are important in creating the intelligence behind e-commerce sites. A directory server can route a request to the right database, allowing a customer in Detroit, say, to find out whether a flight is available to Houston. An applications server, meanwhile, can provide services like word processing or financial analysis that can be incorporated into a site. Loudcloud is entering a competitive field. The past two years have seen a surge in ``application service providers,' or ASPs, which build the software behind Web-based services, such as online benefits administration for small and mid-size companies. In an interview Tuesday, Andreessen and Horowitz suggested that Loudcloud's mission would be to provide a broad range of computer services to companies that want to focus on their core businesses. ``If you look at the universe of Internet companies, they're not technology companies. They're shoe companies, they're clothing companies, they're real estate companies,' Andreessen said.