Rapid growth for Netscape

Barksdale hit the ground running. He knew that the success of the Netscape browser depended on getting it out to market as quickly and as extensively as possible. However, the threat from Microsoft soon became apparent:

5 ways… Jim Barksdale broke the rules

  1. Turned down a multi-million dollar deal to stay at AT&T, and the opportunity to become chief operating officer of Microsoft, in order to join upstart Netscape.

  2. Ignored proper budgetary controls in order to let the business expand quickly.

  3. Gave the technologists at Netscape the freedom to innovate.

  4. Gave away the company's main revenue earner for free in order to increase market share.

  5. Sold out to AOL at the right time.

'The week I arrived, we released our first commercial ...

Get Internet Entrepreneurs, The now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

Start your free trial