Re: Crypto = Competitive Advantage?

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 2:17 PM 8/9/95, Duncan Frissell wrote:
>Note to Mr. Bill -
>
>I was watching CNBC this morning while reading my mail and they had a story
>on the Netscape Communications IPO (ticker NSCP btw).  Some analyst said
>when asked whether Microsoft couldn't just wipe them out that the most
>important part of Netscape's product was that it offered end-to-end
>encryption.  He said that this was important for the growth of the nets and
>was something that people wanted.

As long as the Netscape IPO topic has come up...

A former member of our list, Marc Andreessen, just became worth $70 million
or so in today's IPO. (IPO = Initial Public Offering, or "Internet PGP
Offering")

Personally, I think this valuation of Netscape at a few billion dollars is
way too high. They've got a leading product, which most folks have gotten
for free, and they've signed a bunch of corporate deals. But a few billion
for a brand new company?

...and who knows how many of their sudden multimillionaire developers will
now leave...?

Crypto could be the next big wave of IPOs, with "Verisign" and "RSADSI"
both rumored to be offered. Some of the digital commerce companies may be
next.

It seems that anything involving the Internet, the Web, and digital
commerce is really, really hot.

--Timothy C. May, President, Bank of the Web


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