Peter Currie (businessman)

Currie graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover in 1974[1] and earned a B.A. degree from Williams College in 1978 and an M.B.A. degree from Stanford University.[1] He worked in various capacities at Morgan Stanley including holding the title of Principal from 1982 to 1989.[1] He held various management positions at McCaw Cellular from 1989 to 1995 before joining Netscape.[1]

Netscape was a key player that "fueled the Internet revolution," according to a report in "The New York Times," and Currie was an executive vice president who worked under its CEO James L. Barksdale and founder Marc Andreessen.[10][11] Netscape developed the Secure Sockets Layer Protocol or SSL for securing online communication which is still widely used as well as JavaScript. Currie became its chief financial officer in 1995 [1] when the company went public.[12] He was Chief Administrative Officer at Netscape from July 1997 until March 1999.[1] In addition to financial management, Currie was responsible for human resources, information technology, facilities, and operations departments.[1]

Currie owned at least 37,500 shares of stock in Netscape which he sold in 1996, according to one report.[13] Netscape was valued at $5 billion in November 1995.[14] In 1999, Netscape was bought by America Online and became a holding company.[1]

Netscape was seen as the first Internet superstar which had a meteoric rise but the firm was undone by numerous forces including well-established software firms such as Microsoft. In a conference in 2005, Currie described how "hectic and crazy things were" during the tumultuous years in the mid 1990s.[15] Currie looked back to the tumultuous Netscape days and commented:

The failure rate was highest for the start-ups that were Internet bets on a business model. Others, with a large technology component, have often found a way for the technology and the company to go forward.
— Peter Currie in 2003.[16]

In 1999, Currie and Barksdale and others formed a venture capital firm called Barksdale Group to invest in business start-ups, and raised at least $180 million according to one report.[17] As an investor and consultant, he focused on the enterprise software sector of the business.[1] Currie invested in an Internet start-up called Flipboard in 2010.[6] Currie claims affiliations with Corsair Communications, Critical Path, Inkling, Listen.com, Kodak Imaging Network, Kontiki, IPVALUE Management, Oracle America, Tellme Networks, Zantaz, InfoSpace.com, Clearwire, CNET, Safeco, and Palamon Capital Partners.[1] He serves on the board of directors for oilfield services giant Schlumberger.[18][19] In 2016, Twitter released Currie from its board.[20]

Currie's advice was sought by Facebook co-founder and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg in 2010.[4]