Elected Exxon CEO
Tillerson is elected president of ExxonMobil and member of the board of directors.exxon
Zuckerberg, Winklevoss’ meet
The brothers and Narendra meet Zuckerberg in the dining hall of Harvard’s Kirkland House, where they explain the HarvardConnection website, the plan to expand to other schools after launch, the confidential nature of the project, and the importance of getting there first. During the meeting, Zuckerberg allegedly enters into an oral contract with Narendra and the Winklevosses to become a partner in HarvardConnection.
Although his attorneys have denied that any formal discussion about compensation or ownership of Harvard Connection took place, Gao would later tell the court:
I told him that [Narendra and the Winklevosses] would either pay him on a rolling basis or take him on as a partner with the possibility of taking an equal stake. He became visibly excited. He told me that he wanted the latter option … because he thought the Harvard Connection website had the potential to reach out to a very large user base.
He is given the private server location and password for the unfinished HarvardConnection website and code, with the understanding that he will finish the programming necessary for launch. Zuckerberg allegedly chooses to be compensated in the form of sweat equity.
Funding approved
After a hard political battle, President Bush signs an omnibus bill which includes $110 million in initial funding for NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt System. The funding allows the team to proceed with the final design of the probe.
It’s like the old days. We are going to the frontier. We’re going back to the roots of the space program.
Start work on HarvardConnection
The brothers, along with their friend, Divya Narendra start work on a social network for Harvard students named HarvardConnection, which was to expand to other schools around the country. They hire Sanjay Mavinkurve, who works on the system until Spring 2003 and then Victor Gao, who is paid $400 for his work on the website code during the second half of 2003.
Initial public offering
Netflix initiates an initial public offering, selling 5.5 million shares of its common stock at $15 per share. It is traded under the symbol “NFLX”.
Runescape launch
Brothers Paul and Andrew Gower release the beta Runescape while in college, and out of their parent’s home in Nottingham. The game is a fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). The game is browser based, or cloud-based, meaning that any computer accessing the game can do so with no downloads required, a feature that makes the game unique. Andrew:
When I went to university, I discovered text-based MUDs, or multi-user dungeons. I loved the fact that these sorts of games had all these players playing at once – even when you were not playing, the world carried on without you. Because of this, I began creating my own text-based MUD, but I quickly realized that with so many of them out there, there was no way that mine would ever get noticed. So I began to search for a way to make mine stand out, and the obvious way, of course, was to add graphics. With my game, I was trying to emulate text MUDs at the time, purely as a hobby. I worked on it on and off over a number of years…and I believe I started from scratch 3 or 4 times. I finally launched a version of the game after a left university in 2001. The basic plan was to run it for free, but to pay for my hobby through advertising. However, when the dot com bubble began to collapse, advertising dried up, and there was no way to pay for the game’s server.
This was really unfortunate because just the week before I had got 3 big servers for the game, and now was left with no way to pay for them. I began asking players for donations, but quickly decided that this was not the best way to go about it – to rely on people’s sympathy. Basically what we did was calculate how many people we’d need to keep going, and came up with 5000. Thankfully, we managed to get like 2000 subscribers in the first hour, and had our 5000 in the first week. Once we had people paying, we were able to reinvest back into the game. The more we invested, the faster it grew.
Joins Zone Labs
McAfee invests in San Francisco-based cybersecurity firm Zone Labs, creator of the then-popular ZoneAlarm firewall product. McAfee also joins the company’s board of directors.
Co-founds Achex
Arrington co-founds the payments provider and serves as its VP for business development, and general counsel.
Loudcloud launch
Andreessen announces the formation of Loudcloud, a company based in Menlo Park, California, that provides high-performance computing and software services to Internet and e-commerce companies. Loudcloud is later recognized as the first company to conceive of the “cloud” paradigm. Andreessen teams up with several ex-Netscape employees, including Loudcloud’s co-founder and CEO, Ben Horowitz. Andreessen is listed as the company’s co-founder and chairman. According to reports, Loudcloud is privately funded by Andreessen and other employees.
Teammates for Kids Foundation
Brooks founds Teammates for Kids Foundation, a foundation that provides financial aid to charities for children. The foundation accomplishes goals by partnering professional athletes, corporations, and celebrities by getting them to pledge or donate money. All the money raised goes to help kids in areas of their lives, such as health, education, and inner-city outreach programs.
Having the cowboys of the Professional Bull Riders as our teammates could not make me happier. They’re premiere athletes and I am grateful for their decision to use their gifts to benefit the kids
Named HP CEO
Fiorina is first outsider named CEO and President of HP. Board Member:
She is quite simply the ideal candidate to leverage HP’s core strengths in the rapidly changing information-systems industry and to lead this great company well into the new millennium.
Founds Erving Wonder
Carter and Erving found talent management company Erving Wonder by merging Boy Wonder Management and J. Erving Group. As well as Eve, they manage other major hip-hop and R&B stars, Beanie Siegel, Jadakiss, Sleepy Brown, Angie Stone, Floetry, and Nelly.
Sells Tribal Voices
McAfee sells Tribal Voices for about $17 million. He purchases properties in Arizona, Hawaii, Texas, and New Mexico and takes up Aerotrekking.
Founds Memory Dealers
While in college Ver founds Memory Dealers by buying computer parts from companies that had gone bankrupt after the dotcom bubble burst. He invests $1400 from a summer job into 14 nine-gigabyte drives which he sold on Ebay for $350-380 each. He quits college shortly after.
Yahoo buys Viaweb
Yahoo issues 455,000 common shares in exchange for Viaweb, valuing the deal around $49 million. Viaweb now has 21 full-time employees at its Cambridge, Mass., headquarters. Graham says it was an early prototype for today’s startups:
The reason we know that it’s possible to start a start-up with about $10,000 and someone to help with the paperwork is because that’s exactly what we had.
Operates second pub
Houser owns and operates Rusty’s Buckhead Pub in Lagrange, GA., for two years and four months
In a small town one in the entertainment business had better be in with all crowds.We successfully provided entertainment for all while maintaining an atmosphere worth a regular visit. Well rounded bands, food, and genuine communication coupled with a “don’t hold back” approach was a winning combination.
NAACP elects Bond board chairman
NAACP elects Bond as board chairman and he serves for 10 years.
When everybody else was getting worked up, I could find in Julian a cool serious analysis of what was going on.
Business start
Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings found and launch the Netflix website after Hastings was outraged at a $40 overdue fee when he tried returning Apollo 13 to a local video rental store. Originally, Netflix was created with 30 employees and only 940 titles for rent at 50¢ a piece.
Starts HomeNet
After he drops out of college his mother loans him $1,000 to start HomeNet, a company that installs fiber-optic cable. To make ends meet, he works at car dealerships, setting up computers and helping dealers save money by, for example, stringing together their PCs so they could use a common printer.
Bill Gates (was my inspiration) because he started a company in his basement — a software-based company. I could associate with him. He was solving problems with software, and I knew I could do that.
One dealership asks him to build a website to advertise its cars online. Biter doesn’t know how to create a site, with a friend, makes one. Soon he starts building websites for other dealers.
Biter starts building software that allows information about sales and listings to be handled electronically. The software cleaned up any spotty data…
Dealers would spell ‘Chevrolet’ 100 different ways
…and let sellers and buyers both know exactly what was available where, in real time.
Establishes Linc Media
Establishes LINC Media, a systems integration and incubation company. By 2008 the company has annual revenue of US$15 million and 140 employees. Lloyd says he runs his companies with two mottos:
Make a profit, and have mutual respect.