Livingston: You went public in what was the fastest IPO in the NASDAQ ever.
Davis: It still is.
Livingston: How did you manage that? How did you manage creating a business
plan and vision for the company, growing the company, doing all the PR,
and preparing?
Davis: We developed a business plan, but I’d be lying to say that we referred to
it every day. We spent a lot of time on the plan trying to identify what business
we were in and where we’d go, but so much of our life was...

“How can I succeed?” Certainly every day something had to be done, and we
needed to have a focus on a lot of priorities at the same time.
We always needed to focus on hiring good people. People are the foundation
of any company. Machiavelli said you judge a leader by the strength of his
generals, and it’s so true. The team that we put in place would determine how
successful Lycos would become over time, so we tried to hire very well. And
there hadn’t been the Internet industry, which made it harder...

it was everywhere.
Many services that are so commonplace today were all brand new back
then. We were a day at a time. There was massive innovation, and this innovation
has changed the way the world will communicate for decades.
Livingston:Was the innovation technological innovation?
Davis: There was very little technology. We would have engineers in Pittsburgh
come up with an idea and roll it through. We would have product marketing
specialists, management or individual contributing employees come up with
ideas, and the Pittsburgh guys would develop them. We would outsource a...