Greenspun: One big turning point was getting Levi Strauss as a customer. They had acquired a small company that made custom-cut khaki pants, and they wanted a web front end for this new factory that they were building that could take your measurements and sew you a pair of khakis to your specs. They asked around MIT, "Who's really an expert on building this kind of thing?" They came to us and it was a happy coincidence, because they were happy to pay for lots of software and infrastructure and tools and let us keep the rights to it all.

That was one good thing about working for non-technical companies. If you worked for IBM, they make their money by owning technologies, so if you build a technology for them, they want to own it. Whereas publishers or clothing companies, they make their money by having a brand or unique content. I did a lot of work for Hearst Corporation and they don't want to give away the content of Cosmo magazine or their relationship with Fabio, but if you build some Perl scripts for them to do server administration, it doesn't occur to them that that's something that they have to own and prevent other publishers from getting hold of.

So Levi's was a great client and it was a big turning point because it gave us the money to build whatever we needed to build.