Tripod Interview: James Howard

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onchange="self.top.podRedirect(this.options[this.selectedIndex].value)"> <option value="">Related Pods</option> <option value="Freebies">Freebies</option> <option value="MacComputing">Mac Computing</option> <option value="PC%20User">PC User</option> <option value="Second-Hand">Second-Hand</option> <option value="Smallbiz">SmallBiz</option> <option value="Travel">Travel</option> </select></td> </tr> </table> </form> <br clear="ALL">  <p> <p> <ul> <blockquote> <p> <br> <center><img src="../../../work/interviews/img/www_subdomain/interview.gif" width="328" height="122"></center> <p> <font size="+2">James Howard, Part Two: Internet Entrepreneur</font><br> <font size="-1">interviewed by Randy Williams on June 27, 1996</font><p> You can read <a href="../../../www_subdomain/work/interviews/960712howard.html">Part One</a> of the James Howard interview and learn more about PrivNet. <p> <hr align="LEFT" size="4" width="300"> <br> <img align="RIGHT" src="../../../work/interviews/img/www_subdomain/j_howard.gif" width="98" height="131"> <font size="+2">A</font> re you alarmed by Netscape's ability to track your movements on the Web through the use of "magic cookies"? Are you irritated by advertising on the Internet? If you answered yes, then PrivNet's Internet Fast Forward may be for you. Although still in beta stage, IFF has been incredibly controversial. Tripod caught up with James Howard, the 23-year old CEO of PrivNet and gave him the opportunity to tell his side of the story. This week's installment deals with the insane lifestyle of those at an Internet software start-up company. <p> <hr align="LEFT" size="4" width="300"> <p> <b>Tripod: PrivNet is a start-up, basically four young guys from UNC who decided to start a company. How did you go about getting the funding -- or did you guys have deep pockets going into this?</b> <p> <b>Howard:</b> I personally did; I pretty much paid for everything there. Of course independent wealth usually comes at the expense of having independently wealthy parents. I have been kind of like a stock market freak. I turned small amounts of trust funds into larger amounts of capital, basically by gambling away on the stock market. My parents don't actually approve of that, but it was pretty much the only way to raise money. Without that I wouldn't have had the capital to start the company, because it gets pretty darn costly. Just keeping the six of us who work here now going and paying for the T1 gets expensive. <p> <hr align="LEFT" size="4" width="300"> <img align="RIGHT" src="../../../work/interviews/img/www_subdomain/flipmic.gif" width="77" height="92"> <font size="+2"> Software companies are afraid somebody's going to overtake them if they don't work insane hours. There may be somebody out there working a couple hours more a day who can beat you to market.<br clear="ALL"></font> <hr align="LEFT" size="4" width="300"> <p> <b>Tripod: Can you talk about how old the people in your company are and what a typical day working in that company might be like?</b> <p> <b>Howard:</b> Well the average age is probably 22. I'm the old guy, I'm 23. We usually get up at about noon or 1:00 and come into work until about five in the morning, so we sleep about 5 hours a night. It's been like that for the last eight months; that's how our schedule happened to occur, we didn't really plan it that way. It's nice to be on the network late at night because the system load is a bit lower and the network is a little bit more responsive, and its a lot more quiet so you can play your music loud and the offices around you don't care. The goal is always to start working normal hours. but I don't know if that's possible in the Internet business. I mean, you read stories about how people at Netscape are still working 90 hour weeks; the whole industry is still like that. I think the reason it turned out that way is because computer programmers as a whole have always worked really weird hours, and they also tend to be obsessive. They tend to work on a project and keep on working on it until they either collapse or solve it. I mean, if you read about the beginnings of Microsoft, Bill Gates and Paul Allen were sitting around writing Basic for that Altair computer for three months and were just falling asleep at their desks from working non-stop. One of the main reasons people do it is that they're afraid somebody's going to overtake them if they don't work insane hours. There may be a company out there doing the exact same thing, but they're working a couple hours more a day and they beat you to market. There's always that problem. So, that's about how our work schedule is: pretty insane. <p> <b>Tripod: You're still giving Fast Forward away while it's in the beta stage. How difficult does that make it for you to keep paying the monthly nut?</b> <p> <b>Howard:</b> Not too bad -- yet. We expected to not make any money for the first year of operations. We've kind of budgeted to make sure we wouldn't go broke before then. We've actually already had offers from other companies on parts of the program other than the ad filtering. One company wanted to look into purchasing the cookie editor and cookie filter. Another two companies were interested in the little AnySearch button, which adds an extra button in the Netscape toolbar that allows users to go directly to search engines instead of going through Netscape's homepage. We're actually selling everything except for the ad filtering right now, which is kind of interesting. <p> <b>Tripod: How will you be distributing the release version of Fast Forward when it is ready?</b> <p> <b>Howard:</b> It's probably going to be mainly on-line. We're thinking that the on-line versions will probably be free; the only thing we'll charge for is database updates, like $15 to get a year's worth. <p> <b>Tripod: But it seems like the whole paranoia thing [discussed in part one of this interview] could backfire on you. If someone is nervous about cookies or junk e-mail, how likely are they to put their credit card number on the Internet?</b> <p> <b>Howard:</b> We'll probably use Netscape secure server on our website, which is pretty darn secure. There's always going to be a chance that there's some bug in it that we don't know about, but it's as close to being secure as you can get. If someone is really paranoid, they'd have to get it mail order or actually go buy it at a store. That's one of the reasons that we added store shelves and mail order; we were going to originally going to do it just over the Internet because costs are lower and such, but we'll probably end up doing it a combination of mail order, store shelves, and over the 'Net. One of the other problems with the Internet is that people are afraid to buy anything over it because they're going to get their credit card ripped off. We'll have an option for the people that are worried. But the version on the store shelves, you have to pay for the box and space on the store shelves -- did you know that you actually have to pay stores a little bribe to get shelf space for your software? Since all that costs physical money instead of just sitting on our server, we probably have to charge $15 or $18 for the store version. Netscape gives away copies on the Internet and still sells a ton of copies in the stores, because lots of people just want to buy something physical. <p> <b>Tripod: Do you think you'll make enough from IFF -- either the version in the stores or the database updates -- to fund your other projects like [upcoming point-and-click mail encryption software] PrivMail?</b> <p> <b>Howard:</b> We are probably going to make more money on licensing things like the AnySearch button or other individual parts of the program than we will by selling IFF as a whole. If you want to buy a piece of code, help yourself to it. Cash is always good -- the money doesn't know where it came from, as they say. <p> <b>Tripod: What kind of things do you see yourself and your company working on five years from now?</b> <p> <b>Howard:</b> The farthest any Internet company can predict is probably eighteen months ahead, and even then you're probably making it up as you go along. I can't even predict what the industry will look like in five years. I personally would like to be kicking it back in the Caribbean in five years, but I don't know if that's going to happen. I would love to be retired in five years, but hopefully the company will pan out and make a lot of money and we can all go on. <p> <hr align="RIGHT" size="4" width="300"> <img align="LEFT" src="../../../work/interviews/img/www_subdomain/flipmic.gif" width="77" height="92"> <p> <font size="+2">Computer science as it is taught in school is not interesting and it's not even valid. We're making this up as we go along, and the colleges can't keep up.<br clear="ALL"></font> <hr align="RIGHT" size="4" width="300"> <p> <b>Tripod: Could someone who has become used to your hectic lifestyle really just retire?</b> <p> <b>Howard:</b>Well, I'd actually like to start a community theatre. I'm a drama major and I've always been an actor and a ham. The problem with drama is that you never make money at it. Basically every theatre, except for Broadway, depends on donations and charity to operate, and they're always scrimping for cash. I would just love to have a ton of cash and support a really good local theatre. <p> <b>Tripod: So you didn't major in computer science at UNC?</b> <p> <b>Howard:</b> No, but I've been programming since I was a kid. Except for maybe MIT and Caltech, every computer science program in the country is about four years behind the times, so it's pretty much pointless to learn it from there. You have to learn it on your own, and I had already been doing that for the last ten or fifteen years of my life. I didn't see the need to get a computer science degree -- I pretty much knew the stuff already -- so I decided to get a degree in something that I enjoyed, which was theatre. People always think its kind of weird that I am CEO of an Internet software company, and yet I was a drama major. They don't see the connection. <p>Well, the thing is, there is no connection. Computer science as it is taught in school is not interesting and it's not even valid. Nobody I know is teaching web server design or Windows client interface programming except for MIT or Caltech. We're making this up as we go along, and the colleges can't keep up. <p>   <p> </blockquote> </ul> <form method="POST" action="../../../www_subdomain/bin/search/pursuit.html"> <table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" align="RIGHT"> <tr> <td valign="MIDDLE" align="MIDDLE"> <a href="../../../www_subdomain/work_money.html" target="_top"></a></td> <td valign="MIDDLE" align="MIDDLE"> <a href="../../../www_subdomain/work_money/index-html/anchor_toc.html" target="_top"></a></td> <td valign="TOP" align="RIGHT"> <select name="pod_name" onchange="self.top.podRedirect(this.options[this.selectedIndex].value)"> <option value="">Related Pods</option> <option value="Freebies">Freebies</option> <option value="MacComputing">Mac Computing</option> <option value="Second-Hand">Second-Hand</option> <option value="Smallbiz">SmallBiz</option> <option value="Travel">Travel</option> </select></td> </tr> </table> <br clear="ALL"><br> <table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" align="RIGHT"> <tr> <td valign="MIDDLE" align="RIGHT"> <nobr><img src="../../../img/www_subdomain/lycos_power.gif" border="0" alt="Lycos Powered" height="15" width="91"> <select name="cat"> <option value="tripod_www" selected>Search the Tripod Web Site <option value="tripod">Search Tripod Member Pages <option value="lycos">Search the Web</select></nobr></td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="MIDDLE" align="RIGHT"> <nobr><input type="text" size="20" name="query"> <input type="submit" value="Search"></nobr></td> </tr> </table> </form> <br clear="ALL"> </td> </tr> </table> </body>