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Individual was based on one of the big ideas of that era, the same one that later inspired Parker's high school science-fair project: smart agents. At the time, before the World Wide Web, there was a vast amount of information on the Internet that people had neither the time nor the ability to find for themselves. Individual went out and located information that would be useful to people or companies and delivered it to them by fax and e-mail. Individual did well, and in 1996, the year after Netscape's watershed initial public offering opened the way for Internet companies, Individual filed for its own $200 million IPO. By that year, the news-retrieval service, later known as NewsEdge Corp., had 200 employees, 138,000 subscribers, and more than $50 million in cumulative losses. It also had $16 million in rapidly growing revenue and significant investments from Microsoft, newspaper chain Knight-Ridder Inc., and the venture firm Kleiner Perkins.

Acutely conscious of the power of trend thinking in the Valley and on Wall Street, Amram developed Individual's products but also acquired companies that sounded hot. One of those companies was Freeloader, the firm at which Sean Parker worked as an intern. Freeloader had been founded the previous year in Georgetown by a young Wall Streeter named Mark Pincus and by an America Online engineer named Sunil Paul. After querying strangers in a local bar, the duo decided people would value software that surfed the Internet on its own while the computer user was away. In a restaurant, one of the founders overheard another young man spinning business ideas, butted in, and introduced himself, and Jamie Hamilton became the company's first hire. Together they made a prototype and struck deals with search engines like Excite Inc. and the online magazine HotWired, later known as Wired News. HotWired readers then could download the free software, which would scan the publication and other sites at preset intervals.

As the media began writing about Freeloader in 1996, Amram at first offered $25 million for the company. “Freeloader had a unique technology and brand that I thought could get us into the market much faster than developing things internally would,” he said. Pincus suggested that Amram double the price, a fairly outrageous request given that the company had no revenue. Amram kept calling to chat over the ensuing weeks, and Pincus and Paul casually mentioned his interest during an

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