http://startuphistory.ru/ StartUp, бизнес ru Mon, 17 Aug 2009 06:34:07 -0700 http://startuphistory.ru/rss bookCMS Firefox http://startuphistory.ru/post/show/knows_someone_could knows, someone could announce it tomorrow.
Livingston: Are you able to say who you are most nervous about as a competitor?
Ross: I’d say Google or Microsoft. It’s a big enough project that I’m not sure a
startup would be trying to do it, except us because we’re nuts, but it’s possible.
Of the known companies, it would be Google or Microsoft.
Livingston: So right now you are operating on a small amount of seed funding?
Is that to pay your rent, etc.?
Ross: We’re going to take more before we launch, but we’re trying to take as
little as…

]]> http://startuphistory.ru/post/show/knows_someone_could Mon, 17 Aug 2009 06:34:07 -0700 http://startuphistory.ru/post/show/what_you_are what you are doing. VCs are sharks.” Meanwhile, you hear from the VCs,
“You’re too paranoid.” So it’s hard to find the right balance and be human,
because you don’t know who’s genuine and who’s not.
Livingston: It must be frustrating not to be able to share your idea.
Ross: Incredibly. If you ever want to stop a conversation dead in its tracks, just
use my magic words: “stealth mode.” I’ve also found “programmer” to work
well in many situations. But we’ll have our day.
Livingston: Are there any lessons that you learned in the Firefox days that you
are…

]]> http://startuphistory.ru/post/show/what_you_are Mon, 17 Aug 2009 06:34:06 -0700 http://startuphistory.ru/post/show/livingston_you_wanted Livingston: You wanted to take advantage of the rising tide?
Ross: Right. We already had ideas around software, and we said, “This is the
time to do it if we are going to do anything. People are going to listen to us right
now, so we might as well go for it.”
Livingston: Do you have a name?
Ross:We’re calling it Parakey for now, but who knows if it will stick. Firefox was
our fourth name.
Livingston: Can you tell me about any of the challenges you’ve faced?
Ross: One thing is just time. Whenever I’m doing something now, I…

]]> http://startuphistory.ru/post/show/livingston_you_wanted Mon, 17 Aug 2009 06:34:06 -0700 http://startuphistory.ru/post/show/even_knows_what even knows what it is, let alone tried it out. Smells like Firefox all over again.
Those kinds of comments are so motivating. I love the challenge.
We talked to plenty of people at the very beginning of Firefox. It was obvious
that people were not happy with their browser, and it was very clear that, if
we could do something better, we might be able to get them to use it.
Livingston: Do you remember people’s reactions when you gave an early demo
of it?
Ross: People loved the simplicity and went crazy over tabbed browsing. What’s
weird is…

]]> http://startuphistory.ru/post/show/even_knows_what Mon, 17 Aug 2009 06:34:06 -0700 http://startuphistory.ru/post/show/livingston_so_firefox Livingston: So Firefox spread because the browser is better and through word
of mouth?
Ross: Yes. We don’t have people shaping a message or working the press. It’s all
been grassroots, word of mouth, done through Spread Firefox. It’s been interesting
because we’ve seen about a dozen companies adopt the same model
since then. There’s GoTrillian.com, SpreadOpenOffice.org—there are all these
different copycat sites.
Livingston:Was there ever a point when you were really worried?
Ross: Not really. But I’m making it seem like startups are so stress-free, and of
course that’s just not true. It’s just really freeing not to be…

]]> http://startuphistory.ru/post/show/livingston_so_firefox Mon, 17 Aug 2009 06:34:06 -0700 http://startuphistory.ru/post/show/mozilla_project_its Mozilla project, it’s very open, everyone gets a say. If you are a developer, you
get to vote on whether or not a feature gets implemented. Then we come along
and say, “We’re making a product for mom and dad. You still have a voice here,
but some of the features that you think we should add may not be the ones that
they want to use. So you have to take our word for it that, even though 500 of
you want something right now, you may actually be in the minority of a much
larger group that we’re…

]]> http://startuphistory.ru/post/show/mozilla_project_its Mon, 17 Aug 2009 06:34:06 -0700 http://startuphistory.ru/post/show/ross_not_a Ross: Not a bad thing, but you have to deliver. It’s hard to under-promise and
over-deliver when everyone’s promising things for you. We’re trying not to hype
up what we’re doing until we’ve got something people can use. People expect
the world, so if you hype up what you are doing, you have to deliver, and it’s
not easy.
Livingston: Did any competitors ever do anything to anger you?
Ross: Not directly. The only thing that bothers me is that Microsoft seems completely
driven by competition. We tried to be driven entirely by users. There
was a need, so we…

]]> http://startuphistory.ru/post/show/ross_not_a Mon, 17 Aug 2009 06:34:06 -0700 http://startuphistory.ru/post/show/ross_no_but Ross: No, but the users we were getting weren’t really the target audience;
these were people that downloaded beta builds from Mozilla. So it was still a
geek audience. We had to transform the culture at Mozilla because it was all
based around open source ethos, which says programmers are kings, marketers
are sleaze, and everyone else can read the manual. All the branding for Mozilla
looked very Communist—the logo was a dinosaur and the banners ads were . . .
I can’t even describe it, but very odd, technical kind of imagery that didn’t
appeal to most people. We…

]]> http://startuphistory.ru/post/show/ross_no_but Mon, 17 Aug 2009 06:34:06 -0700 http://startuphistory.ru/post/show/which_is_actually which is actually the Chinese name for a red panda.
Livingston: Were the Firefox developers all in different places?
Ross: When we first started doing it, we were all at Netscape. Then Dave left to
go to Apple to work on Safari, and we had some other folks like Ben Goodger
from New Zealand, Pierre Chanial from France, and Jan Varga from Slovakia
come on board. I went back to Miami, and we continued to work together
online.
Joe and I still collaborate through IM on Parakey, even though we’re about
20 minutes apart, because we’re so used to that…

]]> http://startuphistory.ru/post/show/which_is_actually Mon, 17 Aug 2009 06:34:06 -0700 http://startuphistory.ru/post/show/as_a_way as a way to work on the browser that we knew we could make if we weren’t
being controlled by marketing, sales, and all these other influences inside
Netscape. It started off with just three or four of us—the people who had
always been fighting these battles within Netscape to make the right decisions
for users.
For example, we wanted to include pop-up blocking in Netscape 7. It would
have been the first mainstream browser to include pop-up blocking. The
Mozilla folks had all the code ready, but Netscape wouldn’t include it because
Netscape.com had a pop-up ad. Those kinds…

]]> http://startuphistory.ru/post/show/as_a_way Mon, 17 Aug 2009 06:34:06 -0700