EarthLink Inc.

Blackberry.

Well, in 2006, when I started work for Earthlink, I think I got a Blackberry phone and I told the guy, no, I want an iPhone.

And he literally told me, we don't have iPhones.

I said, well, how many people come in here asking for an iPhone every day? And he said, about 50.

Wow.

Right? And then EarthLink acquired that company.

Um, I built another company, um, cyber intelligence firm in DC acquired that.

Geez.

And I had to get an email address for that, and I [laughs] remember being like, "Okay," and, like, getting, like...

I was like, "Well, EarthLink seems cooler than Yahoo!" [laughs] Totally.

I had EarthLink too.

I was like, "Yahoo?" Exactly.

[laughs] What the fuck? Yeah, boo.

The irony that I, that I knew- [laughs] ...

even back then they were losers.

But, um, I, uh, I remember having this EarthLink account, and I remember I was, like, having this, like, hot, like, ver- I was, like, 27.

I'm trying to think, you know, you had some of the bigger names.

You had Earthlink.

You had MSN.

Did Yahoo do dial-up? Yahoo probably did dial-up.

You had AOL.

You had Juno.

Oh, I say Earthlink, Juno, Net Zero, AOL, MSN, Yahoo.

I'm sure there was others.

I didn't know.

But I was, uh, Jason Middleton was a member of early days racing for, for several years, um, with Robin Vencasa and team, no team Earthlink.

Yeah.

Earthlink was like some internet provider way back in the day.

But a ton of commercials.

Yeah.

And they got sponsored by team Earthlink and he did the early eco challenges.

At one point they were, like winning one ahead of the Kiwis.

Worldwide pornography revenues in 2006 were just a little bit over $97 billion.

That's just a number like 1.3 million to me, so it's greater than the revenues of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple, Netflix, and Earthlink combined each year.

Google shares last I saw were a little bit over $600 a share.

It's got nothing on the pornography industry.

Smoking funny things.

Then I was responsible for helping building out a team for Earthlink or Mindspring, which was an early adopted internet company.

Yay! And so I had a great position there where I was building out team systems and stuff like that, and I really loved my job.

Then I got a job with Yahoo, and that then moved me to Los Angeles.

I built three cybersecurity companies.

I've sold one of them to Earthlink back in the day.

Another one was a cyber intelligence firm in D.C., and then...

During my event, I was in the acquisition process to sell to a Silicon Valley company.

So we used like thought certificates back in the day.

So I had to go talk to Earthlink in Manila.

And go fight with those guys all day long to get things going.

Then we switched over to Yahoo.

I, you know, I didn't wanna trust any of these companies, and I, I wanted to learn exactly how the internet, uh, worked at its c- core level.

And, you know, once all these things started coming out like CompuServe and EarthLink and AOL, and, you know, they're like in a box and they just made everything so simple.

And I just got tired of, you know, being away from the house and like, you know, someone kicks the, the, um, electrical cord and it's like unplugged, and suddenly I can't get my emails, and y- you know, it, it's a little similar.

And so these things, these convenient services at, at a certain point I'm just like, "Well, I guess my information's gonna be in the cloud and people are gonna know what I'm doing, but it's just, it's just so damn easy." But you can still do it, and a lot of these, you know, nodes in a box like Umbrel or Start9 or whatever really are...