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feld’s loft, and Shawn showed Lilienthal the new Star Wars movie trailer on his laptop. Shawn and Fanning headed back to Boston, and Grosfeld and Lilienthal took Parker out for a celebration dinner at one of the fanciest restaurants Parker had ever seen, the chic Bouley. After staying the night at Grosfeld’s, Lilienthal decided to treat Parker to his first plane trip, the shuttle flight back to Washington. Napster’s server was going with them, destined for housing at Global Center’s facilities in Virginia. On the way to the airport, Parker realized he had forgotten the inhaler for his asthma. Since he didn’t want to make Lilienthal late, he decided he could make do without it. The two men missed the first plane they tried for, ran to the adjacent terminal, and missed the second plane. By the time they made it back to the first terminal, Parker was getting nervous about not having his inhaler, especially after all the running. Hoping that enough caffeine would open up his lungs, Parker slugged six shots of espresso as Lilienthal watched in disbelief. Out of the corner of his eye, Lilienthal saw a newspaper headline: The record industry had announced another step in what it called the Secure Digital Music Initiative, to encrypt music that wasn’t in the MP3 format. “Too late,” Lilienthal thought.

Finally on board a shuttle and taxiing down the runway with the Napster server in an overhead bin, Parker asked a stewardess if she had an inhaler. He didn’t realize that the airlines have strict rules about asthmatics, since the air gets thinner at high altitudes. The stewardess ordered the plane to return to the terminal and told Parker to get off. Lilienthal lent the teenager $20 for cab fare to get back to Grosfeld’s for the inhaler. As the plane finally lifted off with Lilienthal and the server, the entrepreneur shook his head and reconsidered Sean Parker. “Here’s a kid who doesn’t have any shares in the company,” he thought. “But he has been responsible for all the things that have been happening. Now he’s going to take on the recording industry. And he doesn’t know how to fly on a plane.”

With Fanning amenable to the Draper Atlantic term sheet, all that remained was for Draper, Grosfeld, and Lilienthal to do their “due diligence.” The phrase, something of a hollow one during the Internet bubble, comes from the legal responsibility of the parties to a deal to