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quote on Caterpillar Inc. (ticker symbol CAT on the New York Stock Exchange), and stories about kittens. There were also big challenges, including scaling and the security problem inherent in trolling an unregulated Net that could return viruses to the searcher. But now that Napster had paved the way, investment dollars were laughably easy to get. Kan's status as a public figure in tech publications brought the fledgling Infrasearch site some press, and within days venture capitalists began calling. One would-be investor simply had his secretary call Kan and ask for the address so he could send a check. Kan asked Netscape's Marc Andreessen to check out the site, and Andreessen, who had described peer-to-peer technology as a "once-in-a-generation idea," became an early enthusiast. With the rush of investor interest, Andreessen "helped us sort out what to do," Kan said.

Among the callers were VC firm Redpoint Ventures and Ron Conway, who was never one to let an opportunity go by. Redpoint listened to a presentation about Infrasearch, which didn't include much of a business model. "We just wanted them to pay our bills for a while, to see where it went," Kan said. Redpoint offered to invest with a number of conditions that would make the start-up more serious. Conway was less concerned about the road map. He took the Infrasearch crew out to dinner and offered money right away, with no strings. Young CEO Kan accepted and shook hands on the deal. Kan thought that was it, that now his team could get to work while the check was en route. But with competing investors still sniffing around, Kan soon got a call from Conway's more-organized partner, Bob Bozeman. "Ron wants to get married," Bozeman said. "Ron wants to get married today." Bozeman dragged Kan to a lawyer's office, where the contract for the $2 million deal was signed. "There was no specific business model," Bozeman recalled. "Gene was getting some good notoriety in the press, so we knew there would be a lot of people circling." Andreessen also invested, as did two of Napster's advisers, early Excite Inc. executives Joe Kraus and Brett Bullington.

Kan and his coworkers hired more than a dozen other staffers. And they did develop a plan to make money: They would charge websites to be listed in Infrasearch's service. A screaming endorsement came from Red Herring magazine, named for the preliminary prospectus before an IPO. Red Herring had cozy ties to Conway, who owned a piece of the

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