so then I could go and actually do something.
Livingston: Publishing was happening, you sold WAIS to AOL, then what?
Kahle: Then I tried to work within AOL, and that was very difficult. For an
entrepreneur, acquisitions are very difficult to manage. That’s a warning. I’ve
been through two acquisitions. One was WAIS; that was bought by AOL. The
next round I built two organizations at the same time. One was called Alexa
Internet (short for the Library of Alexandria), and the other was the Internet
Archive, to archive everything that was in the library. Alexa was a for-profit, and
the Internet Archive was nonprofit. I didn’t make enough money to go and make
a nonprofit and fund it myself, and I didn’t know how to ask for money in a nonprofit,
but I knew how to build products.
Alexa Internet was a navigation system for the Internet. Bruce Gilliat and I
started it out here in San Francisco, in a house in the middle of a park—in the
Presidio. We’re in a 1500-acre park in the middle of San Francisco. We’re
the second lease-holder here.
Livingston: You started both companies simultaneously? Did you have different
people running each one?
Kahle: Everybody worked at Alexa. The idea was that everything that Alexa
ever collected would be donated to the Internet Archive. Over the long term,
companies come and go. They usually don’t last that long. But the great thing
that was going on with the Internet wasn’t the technology. That gets replaced.
It’s the information, and it’s all the people. So we started collecting the World
Wide Web and making services in a commercial company, but donating all of
the materials collected to a nonprofit that was designed to last the ages. It was
very specifically designed to think through what happens after the commercial
company is gone.
Livingston: When you first started with Alexa, did you get funding?
Kahle: I funded the first part of it with Bill Dunn. And I cofounded it with a
business-oriented fellow, Bruce Gilliat, because I’m more on the visionary side.
Building in a businessperson has been a good idea. Finding a good partner is
extremely difficult. It’s as difficult as finding somebody that you want to get
married to and you’ll stay married to forever. A business partner is very difficult,
and if you can find a good business partner, stick with that person.
Livingston: What makes a good business partner?
Kahle: Compatibility. Mutual respect through hard times. Maybe it’s clear lines
of differentiation for who does what. But finding a good business partner is a