Netscape's Work Culture

Introduction Contd...

A former Netscape employee commented, "People at Netscape were nervous about the implications of AOL buying us." Allaying these fears, in an address to Netscape employees, Case said, "Maybe you joined the company because it was a cool company. We are not changing any of that. We want to run this as an independent culture."

In spite of assurances by AOL CEO, it was reported that people at Netscape were asked to change the way they worked. In July 1999, Netscape employees were asked to leave if they did not like the new management.

By late 1999, most of the key employees, who had been associated with Netscape for many years, had left. Barksdale left to set up his own venture capital firm, taking along with him former CFO Peter Currie.

Marc Andreessen (Andreessen) stayed with AOL as Chief Technology Officer till September 1999, when he left to start his own company, Loud cloud. Mike Homer, who ran the Netcenter portal, left the company while he was on a sabbatical.

Background Note

Netscape was co-founded by Jim Clark (Clark) and Andreessen. Clark was a Stanford University professor turned entrepreneur.³ Andreessen was an undergraduate from the University of Illinois, working with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.⁴

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3] Clark's first venture was Silicon Graphics, which produced super fast visual workstations. He had invested US $4 million while another US $4 million came from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a venture capital company.
4] The National Center for Supercomputing Applications is one of the five original centers of the National Science Foundation's Supercomputer Centers Program and a unit of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It was founded in January 1986. NCSA is involved in high-performance computing and networking and in developing innovative software applications. NCSA broadened the user base of remote supercomputing and the Internet with NCSA Telnet in 1987. In 1992, the center introduced NCSA Mosaic, the first readily-available graphical Web browser.

Case Details

Case Code : HROB013
Themes: Organizational Culture
Case Length : 13 Pages
Period : 1994-2000
Organization : Netscape
Pub Date : 2001
Teaching Note : Available
Countries : USA
Industry : Information Technology

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