Mitchell Kapor

So, how did these three guys come together? I asked John Gilmore.

Mitch Kapor and John Perry Barlow got into a conversation about cyberspace and the internet and computers and how they were changing the world, but nobody was paying attention to how they were changing the world.

And this was what, late 80s?

Yeah, like 1989, maybe.

And as God appointed it, I sat down at this huge Italian marble table, five times more value than my life at that moment.

And I turned to the guy next to me and I said, who are you and what do you do? And he said, I'm Mitch Kapor and I develop software.

I said, I don't understand.

Yeah, Mitch Kapor and I develop software.

And this is 1981.

So I did not know what he him, not me, him, not me.

And the guy next to me, now you're not old enough to know this guy, I don't think.

The guy next to me, by divine accident, in my opinion, that's just my analysis, is Mitch Kapor.

In 1981, this party is in 1981.

There were only three pieces of microcomputer software.

And I turn to him, and here's a teaching moment.

I turn to him, and I don't talk about me.

I turn to him, and I say, who are you, and what do you do? And he says, I'm Mitch Kapor means nothing to me.

I said, well, what do you do for a living? He said, well, I took a little piece of software called Visiplot and I turned it into VisiCalc.

Yeah.

I met Mitch Kapor.

You know, I, um, uh...

And so I, I was, I was very interested in all of that, but I was also very interested in this concept of new media, alternative publishing.

And that was an interesting thing for me at that point, 'cause I, I was like the, the notion of I'm going into the corporate world-

Yeah

... [laughs] you know, or whatever you wanna call it, uh, was like, "Am I really gonna do that?" But I also, having grown up with the PC revolution, I, I did idealize the great entrepreneurs, Steve Jobs, Mitch Kapor, Bill Gates-

Yeah