Haha indeed - but that's not what I really mean :D.

Netscape was the trigger for a great deal of what you see around you on the Internet today. Obviously, that doesn't mean that if they didn't exist - no one would've done it.

But my point is this: for the first guy to IPO into what started the craze - he didn't get out with too much.

Indeed, if you were to just look at Broadcast.com, which sold for ~$5 billion at the height of the dot com boom, Mark Cuban pulled ~$2 billion for something I think was quietly killed shortly thereafter (i.e. no real impact).