Flashback to Silicon Valley in the mid-’90s: The People Of @Home Network
@Home Network was the first company to provide high-speed cable Internet services. @Home was founded in Silicon Valley in 1995, went public in July 1997, merged with Excite in January 1999, and the rest is history.
In September 1996, I joined @Home Network as the Photo Editor. At that time, there were only four photo editors paid to edit images for publishing on the Internet. I worked closely with many at @Home Network to build the first online broadband photography community called “Making Pictures” with a $3M joint venture with Intel in 1997. I worked for @Home for about 3 years, learned a ton, and made many friends. In addition to my work responsibilities, I made behind the scenes pictures of all of the great people building the company. Some called me the company photographer and others the company historian.
The following images were scanned by a friend from a book we produced for all @Home employees. The following is only a very small sample of the great people that helped build @Home Network. Many of you have framed photographic prints from this series. If you do, please make a high-resolution photo of your prints and email them to me with a caption. I will add some more of you to this post. The book was designed and captioned by Ty Ahmad-Taylor. Captions also written by Jonathan Rosenberg. These images were created with my Nikon F & FM, Black & White Kodak TMAX 3200 speed film, and frequently pushed to 6400 speed. For context, a top tier professional digital photography camera back then was the Kodak DCS 400 series which was a series of Nikon based digital SLR cameras with sensor and added electronics produced by Kodak. This high-end professional camera cost at least $20K, produced only a 1.5-megapixel image and weight was about 3.75 pounds.
I founded LDV Capital after 18 years as an entrepreneur building four businesses powered by visual technologies. LDV is a thesis-driven early-stage venture fund investing in people building businesses powered by visual technology. We thrive on collaborating with deep technical teams that leverage computer vision, machine learning and artificial intelligence to analyze visual data.
FROM: The desk of Tom Jermoluk
TO: The @Home Network
The story of a company is no more or less than the story of its people. Their journey of commitment, creation, hard work, laughter, and ultimately pride. It is dependent on the attraction and bonding of people who share common goals, values, and abilities. Do companies succeed or fail because they have great technology, great business plans, great markets? Or because they have great people?!
Many are the questions we face. What if it doesn't work?
What if it's too hard? What if our partners change their minds? What if ...
To this, we say, "What if it does work?"
We are creating a technology that will change the way people live, work, play, learn, and communicate. The spark that creates change on a level that history will remember. And we few who banded together because we share the vision of "What if it does work?", will know that it worked because we thought it could, and knew it should.
This then is the story of the beginning. The first chapter of a work in progress. These are the special people, and their special moments, at the special place we call @Home.
Sincerely,
Thomas Jermoluk, Chairman and CEO, The @Home Network
April 1998: T.J leading off an all-hands meeting.
May 1995: The @Home Network is founded by Tele-Communications International and Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, and Byers.
June 1996: Cox and Comcast join @Home as equity partners. Employees: 21
September 1996: @Home launches its backbone and offers residential service for the first time in Fremont, CA. Employees: 135
May 1995: Will Hearst and @Home pioneers on University Ave. in Palo Alto, our first home. ©Ellen Goldstein
September 1996: @Home's barren second home, located on Ravendale Drive in Mountain View. Martha Stewart would have had a field day.
Senior Editor Neil McManus wields a Nerf gun and inspires mild titters, along with a little trepidation. This salvo took place upon the first move into the picturesque Redwood City digs.
December 1996: Intermedia Cable, based in Nashville, joins @Home as a distributor. Employees: 164
Video Editor John Polizzi and Art Director Ty Ahmad-Taylor film a cloning video for the, uh, dubious benefit of subscribers. Mattel declines to pursue legal action for "Ken-dismemberment.”
March 1997: Marcus Cable, based in Fort Worth, Tex., joins @Home as a distributor. Employees: 205
Plotting on the set of the latest installment of "Deep Thoughts," hosted by Adam Grosser, Vice President of @Media Software, is Charles Moldow, Vice President of the Media Development Group.
April 1997: Rogers and Shaw, the two largest Canadian cable operators, join @Home. The company also secures $48 million in private financing. Employees: 248
April 1997: Rebecca Paoletti, Managing Editor, and Richard Gingras, Vice President of Programming and Editor in Chief, wonder if they should mention their coworker's really big hand.
April 1997: Burke Culligan, Production Manager, Halle Winkler, Senior Technical Designer, and Ty Ahmad-Taylor try to locate his screen amidst all of that artistically inspiring clutter.
Susan Bratton, Director of Advertising, is welcomed by her staff after returning from parental leave. Oh, and that is Taylor in her arms.
May 1997: John O'Farrell, Senior Vice President of International Sales, commences "Operation: Conquer the World." Mark Mangiola wonders how many Technical Reps it will take to support this stupendous feat.
May 1997: @Work signs a deal with T.C.G., a commercial telephony company, and then formally launches the @Work division to provide high-speed connectivity in the workplace. Employees: 262
May 1997: Dave Bagshaw, Senior Vice President in charge of @Media, asks Bill Luciw, Manager, Client / Server Software, about important customer data tracking under a tribute to, um, well, grain and hops. In this high-pitched theological debate, the score is "Mediocrity: 0, Greatness and Beer:30."
May 1997: Jennifer Doyle, Director of Marketing, and Sydney Williams try to hide their surprise as the company photographer barges into their cube.
May 1997: Frank Pei and Jeff Chang, PC Systems Administrators, prioritize requests that read "critical;' "urgent;' and ''A.S.A.P." Employees later learn the magic words, "Cathy, please! We're dyin' down here," moves you up the queue.
LDV Capital invests in people building businesses powered by visual technologies. We thrive on collaborating with deep, technical teams leveraging computer vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to analyze visual data. We are the only venture capital firm with this thesis. We invest at pre-seed and seed stages. Some example portfolio companies are: Clarifai, Mapillary, Unsplash, Sea Machines, Uizard, Synthesia, etc. Co-investors include Sequoia, USV, NEA, FirstMark, Lux, Menlo, and Atomico among others. Please reach out if you are building businesses powered by visual technologies.
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May 1997: Ken Goldman, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and David Pine, Vice President, and Corporate Counsel have fun with numbers and try to figure how we are going to actually beat our subscriber numbers. Numbers really can be fun.
Kasey Zacher, Advertising Programs Manager, Peter "Scotch" Scocimara, Western Regional Director, and Bill Luciw celebrate teamwork in @Home's own version of "Up With People."
IPO Roadshow
June 1997 (L-R): 1. Tom Jermoluk, Chief Executive Officer, and Ken Goldman introduce the firm to the eager investment banking hordes from San Francisco. 2. Patrick Bacher sets up the roadshow multimedia demo. It not only has bells and whistles but kisses babies and makes the bed. 3. John Doerr chuckles when one of the prospective investors asks about the novella-length, Book of Genesis-like section of the prospectus that describes "risk."
(L-R): 4. Molly Lynch, the real @Home C.E.O., and T.J. take a stroll out of the proceedings. Walking is good exercise, according to the Surgeon General. 5. Milo Medin, Vice President in charge of Networking, right, and John Doerr mesmerize would-be investors. 6. David Bagshaw cheers the first trade with more grain-based liquid.
(L-R) 7. T.J. stumbles home... 8. and speaks to the huddled masses. 9. Dean Gilbert, Senior Vice President of @Home, and Ken Goldman guffaw and drink.
10. The ghost of John Malone, head of T.C.I., speaks at the I.P.O. party. 11. Oh lordy, it's the Macarena. 12. The prospectus. Thrilling reading, all of it.
June 1997: Jake Moffat, Executive Assistant for @Media, wheels in @Home-authorized graffiti from the previous (SuperFund), older building in Redwood City. Brendon Macaraeg, the Channel Designer, ignores the newly-christened "Plaster Shuttle." This sort of thing would never happen in France.
John Doerr, of Kleiner Perkins speaks with T.J at Hearst Castle at San Simeon.
Will Hearst, @Home's first CEO, middle, dares Milo Medin to "take a dive in Neptune's pool" at the castle at San Simeon. Employees: 274
June 1997: Rick Francis, Director of @Work Systems Engineering, Don Hutchinson, Senior Vice President of @Work, and Scott Sorochak, @Work Account Manager, celebrate reaching the 100 customer mark with a non-alcoholic merlot. Or something.
Troy Strahl, Manager, Online Support, talks with the @Blur, who is rarely seen, but knows how to tell a customer to "shut down and restart ."
June 1997: Milind Gadekar, Product Marketing Manager, writes on a Silicon Valley institution, the whiteboard, while Jonathan Rosenberg, Director of Product Marketing, ignores his son, Joshua. For the record, this was not "Bring Your Child to Work Day."
July 1997: @Home's Initial Public Offering raises $104 million.
June 1997: Dan Kiewlich, the Network Analyst, tracks two screens at once in the Wargames-like Network Operations Center.
June 1997: Steve Reichgut, Product Manager, Internet Business Services, and Rob Rustad, Director of Product Marketing for @Work, test out the wall strength of the earliest @Home Redwood City building. They were not, of course, away from their desks more than a wee five minutes, however.
June 1997: Greg Hooten, Manager, PC & LAN Support, and John-Paul Merlaud, Manager of Telecommunications, reach a Quaker consensus as to how to fix the hanging wire. Residents in Poughkeepsie cheer the restoration of their link to the outside world and vote Libertarian.
Chuck Bremberg, Engineering Technician, sports his Dilbert-wear as the network, indeed, may be down. But just for a millisecond.
June 1997: Russ White, Narrowband Webmaster, shows off his legs during an all-company meeting.
June 1997: Lori Reeder in an earlier guise as @Work Marketing Assistant, and Eric van Miltenburg, Director of Business Planning for @Work, going over thrilling budgetary material because, hey, someone has to do it.
September 1997: Cablevision joins @Home, bringing homes exclusively committed to the Network to over 50 million in North America.
July 1997: John Veizades, Director of Client Software, and his wife share their newborn with coworkers. Employees: 276
@Home's first subscriber evangelizes the network to the entire company at another all-hands meeting while ABC's "Nightline" crew shoots for an October special on the Valley.
September 1997: Third quarter results: 26,000 paying residential customers, 200 paying business customers. Employees: 286
September 1997: David Temkin, Manager, 2.0 Client Software, and Richard Gingras wish for manna as they come to a consensus on another Really Big Project. Bonnie Burton wonders if the Generation X crowd aren't really the adult supervision here at @Home.
September 1997: Colum Lavelle, Online Support Specialist, and Jake Moffat push a new hire down an exceptionally steep hill in the @Home entry to the Sand Hill Downhill Derby. That's dedication.
Ken Schwing, the top-secret spy for MI-6 by night, mild-mannered HFC Account Manager for @Work by day, is actually, um, invoking his namesake here. He is Tiger Woods. (But duck, just in case.) Employees: 294
October 1997: Paul Falworth of @Work Marketing Communications celebrates Halloween in his own, special (very special, in fact) way.
October 1997: The celebration of the birth of a new division, @Wicca, for all of your high-speed Winonah Ryder-esque spell crafting needs, coincides with Halloween. And a child shall lead them.
October 1997: Karen McNally, the Executive Assistant for the Legal Department, experiences the thrilling relaxation of the @Home reflecting pond in her compelling Halloween haberdashery.
October 1997: The local popsicle vendor enters the building to dole out refreshment to all who hear the cart's gentle ringing. An @Home Friday tradition.
December 1997: George Faulknor, Technical Support Representative, gets his portrait drawn at the Winter party. This was originally part of the new-hire test, but the charcoals often got, well, messy.
December 1997: The @Home service is available in 19 major US. markets by the end of the year. The stock trades in the $20-30 range, valuing the company between $2.5 and 3.75 billion. Employees: 327
December 1997: If the Rolling Stones can still tour, then why not two senior Vice Presidents? Remembering the lyrics is the probably hardest part. "Emotional Rescue" anyone?
Al Cho, Content Engineer, and Ty Ahmad-Taylor ponder an office without walls-or furniture for that matter-in the new building.
(Double page scan will be improved at some point)
@Home Network employees at the end of 1997.
Download your own version of “Off The Map: A Presentation of the @Home Network”
January 1999: Don Coleman, Director & Corporate Development celebrating at the @Home & Excite.com merger.
(L-R) Naval Ravikant, Milo Medin, Claude Leveille & T.J.
Chuck Bremberg, Engineering Technician, making sure I know who is the boss.
August 1998: Cisco and @Home Network Hit the Road to Promote High-Speed services and we took a break. (I forget who this is with their son - please help.)
I hope to find more time to scan other images after completing some milestones at LDV Capital.
Many of you have framed photographic prints from those days. If you do, please make a high-resolution photo of your prints and email them to me with a caption. I will add them to this post. Also, please help me improve any incorrect captions, add more links to LinkedIn, or just to say hello!