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As graduation neared, Parker told his parents that he wanted to work for a year before going to college. That wasn't true: Secretly, he planned to work just long enough to hatch another business. During his senior year of high school, Parker heard about an invitation-only day of interviews for experienced managers applying to UUNet, the largest Net access provider for businesses and one that enjoyed a good reputation for innovation. He called the company and pretended that he had an appointment and was on the way, but had lost the directions. When he got there in his standard intern garb, he saw thirty people in suits. He got a lot of dirty looks, but each of the several UUNet staffers he met wanted to hire him. Parker was “cocky but creative and amusing,” said Jonathon Perrelli, who headed UUNet's hiring at the time. Parker came away with an entry-level job writing internal software applications.

As at Freeloader, Parker networked and made one key contact, this time Perrelli himself, a recent Virginia Tech graduate who had run a small business before joining UUNet. Perrelli took Parker under his wing, and they became good friends. Parker would bounce business concepts off Perrelli or throw out ideas about how to do things better at UUNet. Parker “had the unique ability to accomplish a hell of a lot in a very short period of time,” Perrelli said. “So the rest of the time he envisioned the future of connected networks, and usually he did that while he escaped his cube to my office.” Once when Parker wandered in, Perrelli was trying to figure out how to process online job applications better. Parker took over the whiteboard, started drawing with markers, and helped Perrelli come up with a system that allowed UUNet to hire three thousand people in less than two years. In return, Perrelli built up Parker's confidence and dressed him in promotional UUNet gear until Parker resembled a fully outfitted “UUgeek.” Parker stayed a year and a half, until February 1999—the longest he would hold any job, including his assignment at Napster.

Perrelli also would come to play a part in the formative months of Napster. And through him, Parker met other technologists and sales professionals who would circle around the revolutionary start-up. Among them were brothers Scott and Mike Shinn, hotshot engineers and security experts who developed database technology that complemented what Napster would do. In his other networking efforts, Parker kept in touch

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