Pop.com also recruited a Walt Disney Imagineering alumnus, Kent Wong, as CEO. Pop.com, backed by DreamWorks SKG and Imagine Entertainment, was a famous dot-bomb that never got off the ground, despite a reported $50 million bankroll from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. It’s no accident that YouTube was founded the same year Abode unleashed the momentous Flash update. Before that, some users needed special plug-ins and codes just to play herky-jerky video on their desktop and laptop monitors.
#Dotcom boom software#
The all-important leap-forward for video via the internet came in 2005 when software giant Adobe added crucial updates to its ubiquitous Flash Player that made it much easier for the average user to watch video directly in a web page. “We launched it and people loved it but we had like seven users.” We struggled to last until the world changed.” “We were dealing with a great thing that was too far ahead of its time,” says Gross. Former Walt Disney Imagineering executive Joe DiNunzio was recruited as CEO. Z.com counted Steven Spielberg, Brad Grey, Jerry Bruckheimer, 3 Arts Entertainment and Guy Oseary among its industry backers. CitySearch was an early internet data and navigation experiment that merged with TicketMaster. Gross at the time was basking in the glow of his association as an investor with startup phenoms that would ultimately become emblematic of the era’s excess: EToys, which was valued at $7 billion in its IPO - until it wasn’t. Suddenly he was flying to New York to woo Chris Rock and Adam Sandler for a production pact. In 1998, Gross was a co-founder of Z.com, a short-form content venture born through Gross’ Pasadena-based Idealab dot-com business incubation banner. It made it wildly successful and important for society,” says Bill Gross, entrepreneur and investor who was among the most high-flying of his ilk in the late 1990s. “The fact that money poured in advanced the state of the internet. But some of the investors, entrepreneurs and creatives who were active in that period say the rush of investment, technical R&D and the explosion of empire-building ambition in this fin de siecle moment laid the groundwork for the radical transformation wrought by streaming that has shaken the industry to its core over the past 15 years. Most of the ventures flamed out with not much to show for them. 11, 2001, myriad startups were hatched with the ambitious goal of bringing original content to computer screens. Not always in that order.ĭuring the half-dozen years that stretched from the first internet-era IPO to grab investors’ attention - the August 1995 debut of web browser Netscape - through the attacks of Sept.
The 9/11 terrorist attacks marked the end of the first frenzied wave of investment and hype about dot-com ventures that brought Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Hollywood together in the pursuit of riches, innovation and creativity. The era of irrational exuberance was already running on fumes by the time the Twin Towers fell.
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