The Outsider 84
Stanford he wanted to start a career within Internet, the
chairman thought Elon would fail. “Well, give it a shot, but
I’ll bet we’ll see you in three months,” the chairman said.
On the other hand, his professor at Stanford thought he
would never return.^265
Now Elon set out to find a job related to the Internet.
“It was hard not to try and see if I could push it [Internet]
forward,” he said.^265 In the early years of the Internet Age,
it was almost impossible to find a company in the industry
that at the same time wanted to recruit inexperienced
employees like Elon.
A popular web browser in the 1990s was Netscape
Navigator with a market share of 90 percent. Years later,
Netscape Navigator would lose its market share to Mi-
crosoft’s Internet Explorer. “Microsoft should not be al-
lowed to own the browser market,” Elon said. “If they
do, they will own the gateway to the Internet for every
consumer and it’s almost certainly likely to result in a less
valuable experience for the consumer.”^264
Netscape needed to recruit new employees, so Elon
tried to get a job there. But he failed for unknown reasons
because he received no reply on his application. He became
desperate and decided to visit the Netscape office with his
resume. As he was shy, he dared not speak to anyone, so he
just hung around in the lobby before he went home again.
Elon knew he always wanted to work within an area
where he could invent a sufficiently advanced technology
that’s indistinguishable from magic – like in his favorite
quote by Arthur C. Clark. But he was never sure if he