Why I started an ISP in a small Kentucky town

The browser that opened the door

Netscape Navigator arrived in 1994. For me, the work of Marc Andreessen and the Netscape team changed what I could offer: a web that people could navigate and use. That made selling internet access a practical business opportunity.

I started Wildcat Internet in a small town in Kentucky. A browser gave people a way to explore the web; an internet service provider supplied the connection. Netscape made those two pieces fit together in a way that people could understand.

That connection between usability and infrastructure matters. A network becomes more valuable when people can see what they want to do with it. The browser helped make the reason to get online clear.

Access, hosting, and commerce

Wildcat Internet offered dial-up internet access, website hosting, and e-commerce services. Each addressed a different part of using the internet: getting connected, publishing something of your own, and doing business online.

Those services belong together. Access lets someone reach a website. Hosting gives that website a place to run. E-commerce turns a visit into the possibility of a transaction. A useful internet needs the services behind the browser as well as the browser itself.

The work continues

My work since Wildcat has taken me through streaming video, cloud infrastructure, and distributed systems. The scale and technology have changed, but the relationship between infrastructure and the people using it remains central.

Today, at Pipe Network, I’m focused on bringing content and compute closer to people. Wildcat Internet is where that story begins: a small Kentucky town, a more usable web, and a business built around helping people connect to it.