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We got the newspapers on the Internet during that time. You take it for granted, but all the newspapers are pretty much online now. They control their own distribution. They have their own websites. It doesn't all funnel in through an iTunes. The music guys, I'm not sure why they did this, but they…

Newmark: At the end of '97, we were getting about one million page views a month. At that point, Microsoft Sidewalk—or their PR people—approached me about running banner ads. I had decided to not do them, because they'd slow the site down and they were kind of dumb. Banner ads are, more often than …

Another advantage of telling the truth is that you don't have to remember what you've said. You don't have to keep any state in your head. It's a purely functional business strategy. (Hackers will get what I mean.)

It was pretty miserable. Basically, the angel investors played chicken with us. They knew we couldn't get money from anyone else, since we didn't even know for sure if we owned our software. So they proposed to do a cramdown round where they would refinance the company, I believe, at a pre-money va…

Graham: There were always people trying to buy us. There was another one just at the point where we found Fred Egan—a Japanese company that later made an imitation of our software and went on to become a big success in Japan. Rakuten, they were called.

Livingston: They copied you?

Graha…