Can You Work in Netscape Time?

Fast Enough Never Is

It was early February 1994 when Jim Clark learned that young programming whiz Marc Andreessen had moved to Silicon Valley. Almost immediately, Clark sent Andreessen an e-mail and asked to meet. The two hit it off; Clark invited Andreessen to devise a plan that would make waves; Andreessen proposed his Mosaic killer; the new partners hopped a plane to Champaign-Urbana and hired a bunch of Andreessen's college buddies on the spot.

By April, programming on Mozilla was moving toward full tilt. It took the new team just six months to release a beta version of the software that would overthrow Andreessen's original creation.

Ever since that initial Clark-Andreessen meeting, Netscape has maintained this lightning pace. Engineering Vice President Rick Schell says it's not unusual for the company to contact a hot young programmer on Monday, do a series of interviews on Tuesday, and say "welcome aboard" on Wednesday.

Netscape can move quickly because it knows what it wants. It targets programmers from best-of-breed schools (Stanford, Illinois) and speed-driven companies (Oracle, Silicon Graphics, Next). More than just brains, Netscape wants buzz -- programmers comfortable with the company's code-writing culture. Output is valued in the extreme. Activity itself means nothing. Fast enough never is.

The Paranoid Predator

The first job of Andreessen's team was to kill the product many of them had worked to create. Little wonder, then, that Netscape, having killed in order to be born, never forgets how quickly the predator can become the prey. This is a company that's always looking over its shoulder.

At least that's what Jim Clark hopes. His job, he says, is creating "paranoia" among the troops. So what if Clark himself is one of Silicon Valley's fabled entrepreneurs? So what if Netscape's senior management team includes celebrated executives such as James Barksdale, formerly a top player at both FedEx and McCaw Cellular? So what if Netscape's IPO is the envy of Wall Street? Clark's role is to undermine the glowing publicity, subvert the evidence of success, and instill fear and urgency at all levels.

In meetings of his senior staff, or at all-hands sessions in the company cafeteria, Clark portrays Netscape as a 300-person underdog up against the likes of mighty Microsoft and Oracle. And not without reason. Microsoft's new online service, The Microsoft Network, comes equipped with its own Web browser -- based, ironically, on Mosaic, and licensed from Netscape competitor Spyglass Inc. If just 10% of the projected 40 million users of Windows 95 choose to access the Web through Microsoft's Internet Explorer, the game changes -- radically. Add a collection of other rivals - some of them brand names, many of them well-funded -- who are building, licensing, and otherwise upgrading Web browsers, and paranoia looks more like justifiable anxiety.

Especially in light of the stakes for which Netscape is playing. Netscape makes no bones about its strategic intent. It is not out merely to prosper. It is out to dominate. It wants to be the Microsoft of the Internet. Anything less will not be just disappointing; it could be fatal. Which is why Netscape's leaders do not see the company's 75% market share as a competitive aberration. It is the precondition for success.

Skeptics continue to wonder about Netscape's strategy: How can a company that aspires to dominate a market give away its core product? In fact the Navigator, while certainly Netscape's most famous product, is not its core product. The Navigator is the market-maker by which Netscape establishes a standard. Its growing collection of server products -- complex software that companies use to post information on the Web and conduct electronic commerce --are the revenue generators through which Netscape will earn the bulk of its profits.

"Netscape builds printing presses," says President James Barksdale. "But first I've got to teach everybody to read, or there won't be any publishers."

Jim Clark offers a simpler explanation. "This is not freeware," he says, "this is marketware."

All Work, All The Time

How does a predator avoid becoming prey? How does a company with 75% of its market increase share against well-funded rivals? It's simple: nobody ever stops working.

General Manager Jim Sha says he routinely spends 11 hours a day at the office, joins his family for dinner, then works late into the night. But there are still not enough hours to go around. His all-too-common lament: "Where do I find another 10 hours" a week? So he and his colleagues improvise. Stuck in a meeting? Check e-mail on your laptop. On your way to a stress-alleviating touch football game? Debate alternative approaches for painting graphics on a computer screen. Eager to see your wife and kids? Buy computers with videoconferencing capability and visit while you're still at the office. This last wrinkle, from Mike Barbarino, never got past the wish-list stage. But in a few months? "Nobody's really pushing us to do this," Barbarino explains. "We tend to do it to ourselves."

Not long ago, for example, Barbarino learned that Netscape's biggest customer, MCI Communications, needed a new feature for its customized version of the Navigator. It was a feature, amazingly enough, that he and his fellow engineers had failed to anticipate: advertising. Overnight, Barbarino created the necessary hooks -- pieces of programming code that allowed MCI to slip advertising into designated spots -- and met a non-negotiable deadline for a prototype. So it goes when you're working in Netscape Time.