The document provides brief biographies of several technology pioneers from the early days of the internet and web. It summarizes that Sergey Brin and Larry Page co-founded Google after developing the PageRank algorithm while students at Stanford. It also mentions that Marc Andreessen co-authored the Mosaic browser and co-founded Netscape, and that Steve Case founded AOL which helped popularize the internet. Finally, it notes that Pierre Omidyar founded eBay in 1995 after it was originally called AuctionWeb.

1. The Next 40 of the 140
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2. Sergey Brin
As Google co-founder, Sergey Brin recalled during
an interview at the Global Entrepreneurship
Summit at Stanford, "In the early days when we
had the little prototype and we were shopping it
around he [Filo] said, 'Why don't you just go out
and build this thing?' (Although we heard a
slightly different version of the story, from
someone else who was in the room.) They went
to Excite CEO George Bell and offered to sell it to
him for $1 million. He rejected the offer and later
criticized Vinod Khosla, one of Excite's venture
capitalists, after he negotiated Brin and Page
down to $750,000. But remember: it was a tough
time in tech. The dot com bubble had just burst.
Yahoo! owned search. And Google was a silly
name for a company. Photo: en.wikipedia.org

3. Larry Page
Google, nee BackRub, got its start
in Larry Page's dorm room at
Stanford, where their web crawler
gathered data and ranked it in
order of importance, thus
developing the PageRank
algorithm. Yes, it was named for
the Google co-founder himself.
Fun facts: Page’s mother was a
computer programming instructor
at Michigan State University and
his father was a pioneer in
computer science and artificial
intelligence. Photo: flickr.com

4. Marc Andreessen
Although he’s best know for having founded
VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (with Ben
Horowitz and aka a16z), in his early history,
Andreessen co-authored the Mosaic
browser while at the University of Ilinois,
Urbana-Champaign - and some say walked
out the door with it. Credit where credit is
due. He also co-founded Netscape, the
game-changing web browser, with Jim
Barksdale. He founded and later sold
Opsware to HP. Andreessen also founded
Ning, (co-founder: Gina Bianchini), which
provides a platform for social networking
websites. Of course he was one of the first
inductees into the Web Hall of Fame in
1994, before most people even knew that
the Web existed. Photo: Wikipedia

5. Steve Case
While he’s best known as Chairman
and CEO of AOL who did help to put
America Online, lately he’s been
fostering entrepreneurship in the
primarily so-called fly-over states
with his Rise of the Rest seed fund.
Photo: flickr.com

6. Esther Dyson
With Release 1.0, Esther Dyson offered early
industry analysis and every year hosted PC
Forum (by invitation), which brought together
the industry shakers and movers and debuted
companies to watch. It was a must-attend that
put ICQ, Facebook, YouTube on the radar,
among many, many others and attendees were
an industry Who’s Who at the time, including
Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, John. Doer. Slack
founder Stewart Butterfield was there years
before Slack was even an idea. Dyson is, of
course, also a savvy investor – and never very
far from a swimming pool. Her focus right
now: Space and wellness. Photo: Wikipedia

7. Netscape
The browser that changed everything.
Then Internet Explorer (MSFT)/the
browser wars came along, proving
once again that first to market does
not necessarily mean that you own
the space. See ‘Yahoo!’

8. Josh Harris
One of the most prescient Internet pioneers you’ve
never heard of. First, Harris founded Jupiter Research,
whose early conferences always brought to the stage
the Internet pioneers to watch (eBay exhibited not long
after they launched – on a small high table, which is all
they could afford at the time). He divested himself of
that and founded Pseudo.com in 1993, a live audio and
video webcasting website, which filed for bankruptcy
following the end of the dot-com bubble in 2000.
Harris’s mistake: turning down Yahoo’s acquisition offer.
If memory serves us, the offer was $1B. Instead, they
bought Broadcast.com from Mark Cuban for $5.7B.
Harris is also known for being the subject of the
documentary We Live in Public, when the camera
followed him everywhere (to the toilet, too, long before
it occurred to Lena Dunham) to prove how, “in the not-
so-distant future of life online, we will willingly trade
our privacy for the connection and recognition we all
deeply desire.” Photo: Wikipedia

9. ICQ
Before there was mobile texting (and after
there was IRC) there was chat messenger ICQ,
or “I Seek You.” Founded by Arik Vardi, Sefi
Vigiser, Yair Goldfinger and Amnon Amir (who
left the company early to go back to teaching).
ICQ was the first Israeli company to have a
major exit (1998 $407M to AOL, less than years
after its founding). To dispel two popular
myths: Yossi Vardi (Arik’s father) was the
dealmaker, not a founder and the US
headquarters was in NYC, not Silicon Valley.
Fun fact: they named their servers for comic
book heroes. Photo: Wikipedia

10. Chris Shipley
The DEMO Conference was a must-
attend, and as executive producer
from 1996–2009, Shipley was
responsible for helping more than
1,500 companies launch their
products to the audience of 700+
industry insiders, investors, early
adopters, and journalists who
attended to hear her analysis of
the state of the industry and see
the technologies that she vetted.
Companies she introduced
included TiVo, VMWare,
salesforce.com, GrandCentral, and
Ribbit. Photo: Wikipedia

11. Fred Wilson
Union Square Ventures, which Wilson
co-founded with Brad Burnham, is one
of the top NY based fund, and enjoyed
billion dollar exits five years in a row.
But Fred was no stranger to the
carnival. Back in the day (Web 1.0), he
invested through Flatiron Partner with
now life coach Jerry Colonna. Did he
learn anything from the first dot com
era? His avc blog is a popular one, and
he’s now just a few blocks south and
several tax brackets north of where he
was back in the day. That would be
‘Yes.’ Photo: Wikipedia

12. Ron Conway
Before he became the Super Angel
of Silicon Valley, or perhaps one
reason why he was able to become
that, Ron Conway was the co-
founder of Altos Computer
Systems, which went public in
1982. He was also the founder and
partner of the Angel Investors LP,
where he was an early stage
investor in Google, Ask Jeeves and
PayPal. According to Wikipedia, he
began investing independently in
2005, and by 2006 had achieved
sixth place in the Forbes Midas list
of top "dealmakers". Photo:
Wikipedia

13. Michael Arrington
There was a time when the TechCrunch founder
was considered one of the most influential
people on the Internet, if not in the world (Time,
2008). He also started TechCrunch Disrupt, and
when Michael took to the stage, you could feel
that there was a master in charge. Five years
after it’s founding, TC was acquired by AOL,
which also acquired the Huffington Post a year
later, the year Arrington came under fire for
conflict of interest for the publication’s coverage
of companies in Arrington’s investment portfolio.
Some feel that this is what led to his departure,
but considering that with the acquisitions, he
now reported to Arianna Huffington, well… Yeah,
that would work. The tech industry lost an
important and irreplaceable voice with
Arrington’s departure. Photo: Robert Scoble

14. Michael Dell
Founder, Dell Technologies (and Dell
Computer), which he basically started out of
his dorm room at the University of Texas. In
1992, aged 27, he became the youngest
CEO of a company ranked in Fortune
magazine's list of the top 500 corporations.
He also has an amazing memory. Trust us.
Photo: Wikimedia

15. Paul Graham
Co-founder, Y Combinator, one of the
most influential accelerators in the
world. He also founder Hacker News.
He also co-founded Viaweb (1996), the
first ASP, acquired by Yahoo! in 1998
for Yahoo! stock (value: $49.6 million).
Photo: Wikimedia

16. TheGlobe.com
Before there was Facebook, there was theglobe.com
(1995), founded by two Cornell University students
(Stephan Paternot and Todd Krizelman) pretty much out of
their dorm – and might have marked the dawn of the era
of Fresh Young Things. The site was an instant hit, and the
pair raised $90M, seemingly overnight (ok, 1997), and
took the company public a year later, making by setting a
record for IPOs, with a 606% increase over the initial share
price. Paternot (definitely a character) also made
headlines when he was out clubbing with his model
girlfriend one night and was caught on camera (in shiny
leather pants) proclaiming, “Got the girl. Got the money.
Now I'm ready to live a disgusting, frivolous life."
Unfortunately, the dot com bubble burst the following
year and it wasn’t long before Paternot and Krizelman
were ousted from the company. At the time, the stock had
gone from a high of $97/share to 10 cents. Fast in, fast
out. Photo: wikipedia

17. John Carmack
A video games legend, Carmack
was the lead programmer of the id
Software video games Command
Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom,
Quake, Rage and their sequels, and
is best known for his innovations in
3D graphics. Did you know that in
2013, he became CTO at
OculusVR? Photo: Wikimedia

18. Dungeons & Dragons
The role-playing
game has been
around since 1974,
believe it or not. And
still going strong.

19. Kim Polese
Who hasn’t heard of Java? Then-Sun
Microsystems employee Kim Polese was
its founding product manager when it
launched in 1995. She went on to co-
found internet software management
company Marimba, which she took to
profitability and sold to BMC in for
$239M. Photo: SpikeSource [Public
domain], via Wikimedia Commons

20. Chad Hurley and Steve Chen/YouTube
Founded by PayPal employees Chad
Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim
(who was the first one to upload a
video to the site) in 2005, many of
the early copy-protected videos were
posted and shared illegally. The
company was definitely a game-
changer and was acquired just over a
year later by Google for $1.65B. Since
an early ongoing favorites are cat
videos, we’ll share one of our list-
toppers. Photo: Wikimedia

21. F*cked Company
Phil (Pud) Kaplan and Jason (founder, the
dotcom deadpool) both worked at an interactive
ad agency called OnRamp/Think New Ideas.
Jason started his site first, but during a drunken
night out, Pud bet Jason that he could launch a
site that could kill the dotcom deadpool
overnight. Indeed, FuckedCompany did just that,
chronicling troubled and failing companies as
only Pud could. Let’s just say that brutal honesty
was welcomed, emphasis on ‘brutal.’ Of course it
was a parody of Fast Company, and according to
Wikipedia, Kaplan attempted to put the entire
site up for sale on eBay attracted joke bids as
high as $10 million but no serious buyers. Photo:
LinkedIn

22. Pierre Omidyar
Founder, eBay (nee AuctionWeb, 1995). First
item sold: a broken laser pointer. We
remember when they first exhibited (at a
Jupiter Communications conference) on a
highboy – the only spot they could afford.
The name was changed to eBay in 1997 and
when it went public, Omidyar was an instant
billionaire. He is also founder of Omidyar
Networ kand Omidyar Ventures. Total myth:
that the first item sold on eBay was a Pez
dispenser – pure PR ploy. Awesome idea: the
Buy It Now feature and good on you, Erik. Big
mistake: the skype deal. Oh, well. Photo:
Wikimedia

23. Brian Cohen
New York Angels chairman Brian Cohen is
another founder who basically started out of
his dorm room (graduate school), reporting
on technology in the very early days of the
industry, pioneering computer trade
publications Computer Systems News and
InformationWeek (which is still being
published). It wasn’t long before he founded
TSI, an early PR agency covering tech (with
wife Carole), which was acquired by McCann
Erikson/Worldgroup in 1997. We still miss the
boat. We still miss the boat (The Rainmaker),
which sunk off the coast of North Carolina.
Photo: flickr.com by Sohee Kwon for
TEDxFultonStreet

24. George Gilder
Writer, investor,
techno-utopian
advocate who
coined the
phrase ‘digerati’
Photo:
Wikimedia

25. Reid Hoffman
When the LinkedIn co-founder was
launching his product, he was informed
that he was late to the game. But unlike
social networks before it, LinkedIn was
business-oriented, used primarily for
professional networking. It’s all about
the differentiators. And you’re welcome.
Hoffman is currently a partner at the
Greylock Partners. Photo: Wikimedia

26. Caterina Fake
Flickr co-founder (and ex-wife of co-
founder Stewart Butterfield). The
wildly popular photo-sharing site
was acquired by Yahoo! (2005). Fake
next co-founded Hunch with Chris
Dixon (2009), acquired by eBay for a
reported $80M two years later. eBay
shut it down in 2014. Note on the
success of Flickr: husband-wife
teams shouldn’t always be
dismissed, investors. Photo:
ncwit.org

27. Stewart Butterfield
File under “Success that Happens When
You’re Not Quite Looking.” Slack was not
the product founder Butterfield was
primarily working on. It was a team
messaging program the Tiny Speck team
had developed while working on a game
called Glitch. Same with Flickr, which he
co-founded with now ex-wife Caterina
Fake, and which was a service that
emerged from tools they had originally
created for a Game Neverending. Photo:
flickr.com

28. Reid Hoffman
When the LinkedIn co-founder was
launching his product, he was
informed that he was late to the
game. But unlike social networks
before it, LinkedIn was business-
oriented, used primarily for
professional networking. It’s all
about the differentiators. And you’re
welcome. Hoffman is currently a
partner at the Greylock Partners.
Photo: Wikimedia

29. Jack Dorsey
Co-founder of mobile payment company
Square and microblogging platform Twitter,
Jack Dorsey started his professional life as a
dispatch programmer. In fact, some of the
open source software he created around
dispatch logistics is still being used by many
cab companies. (Surprised ride hailing never
occurred to him, but guess he had enough on
his plate or maybe it’s because he’s totally
into walking). Twitter was developed with EMS
dispatchers in mind. Not a market as attractive
to investors. Launched in 2006, Twitter went
viral at SXSW in 2007. No bird logo then
(2012) but the fail whale did show up a lot,
and thank you,Yiying. Photo: Wikimedia

30. Aileen Lee
The Silicon Valley-based
Cowboy Ventures founder
coined the term ‘unicorn’ in
a TechCrunch article
Welcome To The Unicorn
Club: Learning from Billion-
Dollar Startups). It soon
became a category – and
raised the bar for all
founders. Photo:
TechCrunch

31. Reed Hastings
Who would have thought that a $40
video rental late fee (for “Apollo 13”)
would eventually help to inspire a
generation of cord cutters? That’s what
led to the founding of Netflix, which
started with DVD rentals and later
became a hugely successful streaming
service and part of the FAANG acronym

32. Sean Parker
Founder of music file-sharing service
Napster and the first president of
Facebook, Parker also co-founded online
address book Plaxo, online campaigning
platform Causes, live video and real-time
sharing/communications website
Airtime.com, and Brigade, an online
platform for civic engagement. He was
also an early investor in Spotify, though
Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. Fun facts:
While in high school, he interned for Mark
Pincus (Freeloader.com) and after winning
a Virginia State computer science fair, was
recruited by the CIA. Photo: flickr.com
s

33. Jeanne Sullivan
Where are all of the women investors?
That might have been what Jeanne
Sullivan was thinking when she co-
founded StarVest Partners (1999) with
three other partners. She also helped to
found the now-defunct New York New
Media Association’s Angel Investors
Program, which was the predecessor to
the New York Angels. It’s no wonder that
Forbes named her as one of the “5 Most
Powerful Women Changing the World in
VC and Entrepreneurship.” Photo:
LinkedIn

34. Susan Fowler
Susan Fowler’s viral blog post
brought much-needed attention
to how Uber and Silicon Valley
companies handle sexual
harassment claims. It also led to
Travis Kalanick’s removal from
Uber.

35. Travis Kalanick
Say what you will about the ousted Uber
founder (and speaking of bad boys of
tech), he disrupted a long-entrenched
legacy industry and that takes balls. Of
course, what got him into trouble (on
more than one occasion) was that he also
happened to be a big, swinging…well, you
know. He could have been a lot better
behaved. Uber may not have been unique
re sexual harassment claims, but the line
had to be drawn somewhere. Photo:
Wikimedia

36. Kelly Ellis
Google sexual harassment whistle
blower who described incidents in
which superiors commented on her
appearance and made sexual
comments about other women.
Google turned a blind eye. Photo:
Twitter

37. Hustle Porn
and the Hustle Pornsters
In case you’re unfamiliar with the term,
it refers to the fetishization of
extremely long work hours, typically by
entrepreneurs or tech workers, who
give up nights and weekends to code or
build their businesses. Then there are
those people we refer to as the hustle
pornsters, pushing you to do more,
faster (no, Brad Feld is not included in
this group) – and they’ll tell you just
how to do it…for a price.

38. Gary Vaynerchuk
Vayner Media, Vayner Sports,
Vayner RSE, successful angel
investor (Tumblr, Twitter, Venmo,
Buddy Media); star of Planet of the
Apps (with fellow judges, Gwyneth
Paltrow, Jessica Alba, and will.i.am);
The Daily Vee (on YouTube);
frequent keynote appearances, plus
Dinners with Gary, Monday to
Monday playlist, the wines, the
Shoe Palace. It’s all Gary, all time.
Photo: Vaynermedia [CC0]

39. Tim Ferriss
4-Hour Workweek, 4-Hour Body, 4-Hour Chef,
Tim Ferriss may well be the self-help guru of the
online world. He’s also an angel investor and/or
advisor to companies including Evernote,
StumbleUpon, DailyBurn, Shopify,
Reputation.com, Trippy, Task Rabbit and Uber
(co-founded by StumbleUpon founder Garrett
Camp.
It’s not just us: In 2008, Wired named Ferriss
"Greatest Self-Promoter of All Time.” He’s
definitely still blogging.
We’ll stop here with the HPs

40. Mark Pincus
CEO and Founder of Zynga, the online
social gaming company that created the
popular Facebook games FarmVille and
Zynga Poker. It went public in 2011. And
yes, we remember FreeLoader. And
Tribe. The early days… Fun fact: we
mentioned that Napster founder Sean
Parker interned for Pincus at Freeloader
while in high school. Pincus was also
the first investor in Napster. Photo:
en.wikipedia.org

41. Naval Ravikant
Founder, AngeList and one of the authors of
Venture Hacks. Ravikant also co-founded
Genoa Corporation (acquired by Finisar),
Epinions, and Vast.com. AngelList was
founded in 2010 by Ravikant and Babak Nivi.
Using the traction from the Venture Hack
blog on entrepreneur financing, Naval and
Babak started a list of 25 investors with
whom they would share interesting
companies in which to invest. They list
started with the subscription of 50 investors.

42. Terry Semel
The former Yahoo! CEO offered
Stanford grads Sergei Brin and
Larry Page $1B for then startup
Google. Brin and Page wanted
$3B, but didn’t want to sell. They
were primarily looking for
investors. Semel refused to
propose any further acquisition
offers. You do remember former
search industry leader Yahoo!,
right? Photo: flickr.com