The first web marketing conference ever

What makes this particular conference so special?

It was the first time a group of people got together to focus on and publicly discuss the commercial potential of the web…

This video features me and Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape and the developer of the first commercially successful web browser.

It’s interesting to see what we were thinking about in 1994…when there were only 3 million people on the web total… when a 14.4K modem was considered fast… before Amazon… before eBay… when Yahoo was just two guys… and the founders of Google were still in college.

What were Marc and his friends hoping to accomplish when they set out to create the first web browser, the tool that set the web on fire? Watch and see…

Marc was just 23, a little raw as a public speaker, but his sense of humor shined through which I’m glad this video captured.

I’ve always believed that Marc Andreessen is the one person whose contribution was absolutely essential to getting the web to where it is now.

Marc would probably disagree, but without the important leadership role he played in the critical early years of the web, I’m convinced we wouldn’t be anywhere near as far along as we are today. In fact, without him, the web might not have ever reached the critical mass it needed to attract the enormous investment of time, money and energy that’s been the secret of its success.

Someday, I’ll tell the whole story and you’ll see why.

I’m amazed at how many web-loving folks don’t know even the basic details of what happened in 1993 to 1995 that laid the foundation for what we have now. It’s an interesting, instructive, and even inspiring story. (Marc’s not into self-promotion, so you’re not likely to ever hear it from him.)

Interesting note: A lot of people came out to hear us speak that day in November twelve years ago, but a suprising number of cutting edge Bay Area “digerati” at the time – including some software executives and multimedia developers – told me point blank they couldn’t imagine what, if any, effect the web could ever have on their businesses and that I was wasting my time putting this event on.

Here’s the link… Note: This article was written before video embed codes became a “thing. ” Originally we had to link to Google Video (the forerunner of YouTube.) Here’s my talk.

– Ken McCarthy

P.S. For over 25 years I’ve been sharing the simple but powerful things that matter in business with my clients.

If you’d like direction for your business that will work today, tomorrow and twenty years from now, visit us at the System Club.