The Sale of WebCom

The sale of WebCom was both bitter and sweet. The sale represented independence and success for many involved, but it also was the beginning of the end. WebCom was bootstrapped from what money Chris had and some surplus equipment that we got from a customer in exchange for free hosting. That equipment lasted us until late 1995 when we needed to transition from a 486 running Windows NT 3.51 and Microsoft SQL Server, to a Sun Enterprise 1000e running Sybase SQL Server.

I mentioned before that Chris and Thomas organized the company with a 67%/33% split, eventually I would have 1%, taken from Chris’ portion, and Neal [the CFO] got 10% IIRC, of which I think Chris and Thomas gave up 5% each. After we moved to 2880 Soquel Ave, Thomas started working on his exit from the company. That exit would precipitate one of the biggest threats we ever had as a company.

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