Where we were in 1994

This is Marc Andreessen now of Andreesen-Horowitz and the co-founder of Netscape, the first company to sell web software.

In this brief clip, he talks about what the climate was like for Internet entrepreneurs in 1994.

Take-aways:

“The prevailing view in the business world and the world at large was that the Internet is not a commercial medium. It will never be a commercial medium. It’s not for consumers. Ordinary people will not use it. And there’s no money to be made on it.”

“People trying to do Internet businesses at that point were generally ridiculed. In fact a lot of very important people in the technology industry were going out in 1994 and saying the Internet will never amount to anything. It’s a distraction. Don’t pay any attention to it. Some very famous and prominent people were saying that.”

Editor’s note: The “prominent people” that Marc refers to included Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison.

“In 1994, nobody believed that anybody would buy any software for the Internet under any circumstances no matter what. Number one. Number two. There had never been an ad run on the Internet ever. Advertising was non-existent and considered not possible.”

All in all a good summary of where the world was in 1994 by someone who was there and paying very close attention.

Now that you know where the world was in 1994, this is where we were that year.

– Ken McCarthy

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

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