PART 1: THE INTERNET IS HAVING A KODAK MOMENT

Netscape’s popularity was synonymous with the internet itself – which is to say, it exploded virtually overnight. In 1995, Netscape went public, reaching a then-unprecedented valuation of $2.9 Billion on the first day of its IPO.

The sheer volume & depth of this data is what’s made it possible to utilize actual AI & machine learning to build content suggestions & advertising experiences with near-perfect relevance and precision.

WebVan in particular was uniquely insane. With just $500K in gross revenues, no profits, and millions in annual burn, their IPO hit an $8 Billion valuation on day one.

Google & Facebook have similarly perfected this balance between harvesting data, content & attention from us in exchange for a little convenience, distribution & dopamine to keep us plugged in.

Google owns all the starting points. Just flipped open the laptop? Open Chrome. Need to find something? Google Search. Time to check your email? Gmail. Using a non-Apple smartphone? Android. Need to go somewhere? Google Maps / Waze. Looking for a video? Youtube. Need to work on something? Google Docs/Drive. And the list goes on.

But while in many ways more limited, the early web also provided a far more level playing field to its early settlers. As there were no “cities” yet per se, the most valuable virtual real estate hadn’t yet accreted to a small cabal of gatekeepers.

The social web brought with it a number of real advantages. Building an audience was 10X faster. And reaching a social audience (in addition to email) gave brands an entirely new way to communicate at scale... But at the end of the day, the land still belonged to the King.

Kodak, after having literally invented the digital camera, failed to recognize that digital was quickly becoming the inevitable future of photography.

Anyone with a domain name & and an email list had the same chance as anyone else of becoming the go-to start page for their niche.