Related Web Works

`Timely' means making stuff at `warp speed'

By Mike Cassidy

Mercury News Staff Writer

INTERNET time. Get used to it.

Internet time is Jonathan Hazlett, 30, getting his first good look at the World Wide Web in August 1994 and junking his plan to start a company to automate oil pipelines and nuclear power plants.

``I started thinking about it,'' he said, ``and I said, `This (Web) has to explode.' ''

Internet time is sitting down that week with Jesuits from the University of San Francisco and offering to build them a multimedia database that scholars all over the world could read and modify.

``We literally drew . . . this on a napkin, using the Web that I had learned about three days before.''

Internet time is Hazlett and partner Rich Heisterberg betting a month later that their new business should focus on designing Web-like networks for use only within companies. The technology didn't even have a name yet.

``We didn't have the intranet term to throw around, but we knew that's where we were going to make our stake.''

Internet time. It's the idea that technology products, and to some extent people who work on them, are aging in dog years. Now, new software programs fly out of new companies and are available on the Internet immediately. Old software and ideas (days old, hours old) are borrowed to build better programs in weeks instead of months. No need for boxes, shipping, manuals. With the Net, it's all out there. Everything is moving faster (with the possible exception of traffic and the line at the grocery store). The pace is blistering.

``Stuff is happening at warp speed,'' says Hazlett, president of Open Minded Solutions, a software start-up in downtown San Jose. ``I can do things in seconds now that used to take a day.''

Which means consumers expect software upgrades and improvements now, if not sooner.

``We do a release every 3 1/2 to four weeks,'' says Hazlett, whose company designed an intranet system for personnel departments. ``Three to five years ago . . . we would have seen releases every six to eight months.''

Internet time means opening an office in April 1995, growing to a company of six within a year and looking to expand.

``By January, we expect to be at 15. By March, we expect to be at 20.''

Internet time means work days that start at 3 a.m., break at 7 p.m. for the drive home and then go on a few more hours at home. It means making a deal with your spouse.

``We decided consciously, let's work hard during the week,'' Hazlett says of his pact with wife Trudy, who manages the office, ``and play hard and rest hard on the weekends.''

Most of all, Internet time means confronting the fact faced by all those who live by its clock.

``Those who can keep up with that will survive,'' Hazlett says. ``Those who can't, won't.''

Mike Cassidy writes about the people and places that make Silicon Valley special. What's your story? Write him at the Mercury News, 750 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, Calif. 95190; phone (408) 920-5536; fax (408) 288-8060 or e-mail to MCassidy@sjmercury.com .

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