At 2:17 PM 8/9/95, Duncan Frissell wrote:

Note to Mr. Bill -

I was watching CNBC this morning while reading my mail and they had a story on the Netscape Communications IPO (ticker NSCP btw). Some analyst said when asked whether Microsoft couldn't just wipe them out that the most important part of Netscape's product was that it offered end-to-end encryption. He said that this was important for the growth of the nets and was something that people wanted.

As long as the Netscape IPO topic has come up... A former member of our list, Marc Andreessen, just became worth $70 million or so in today's IPO. (IPO = Initial Public Offering, or "Internet PGP Offering") Personally, I think this valuation of Netscape at a few billion dollars is way too high. They've got a leading product, which most folks have gotten for free, and they've signed a bunch of corporate deals. But a few billion for a brand new company? ...and who knows how many of their sudden multimillionaire developers will now leave...? Crypto could be the next big wave of IPOs, with "Verisign" and "RSADSI" both rumored to be offered. Some of the digital commerce companies may be next. It seems that anything involving the Internet, the Web, and digital commerce is really, really hot. --Timothy C. May, President, Bank of the Web Special note: My ISP has changed its domain name from "sensemedia.net" to "got.net" (as in "got milk?"), so I have to again ask you all to bear with me and use my new e-mail address, "tcmay@got.net". ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net (Got net?) | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-728-0152 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Corralitos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."