February 1995 Trust
You cannot sell anything on a network until someone invents the lock.
Netscape ships SSL. The FBI arrests Kevin Mitnick on February 15.
In February 1995 Netscape shipped SSL, the padlock that let a stranger type a card number into a browser and believe it would arrive safely. The same month the FBI arrested Kevin Mitnick, the era’s most famous hacker.
Two sides of one coin. The web could not become a marketplace until it could be trusted, and it could not be trusted until people understood exactly how it broke.
Every business I have built since rests on that quiet layer. Trust is infrastructure. It is boring, it is invisible, and it is the only thing holding up the parts everyone finds exciting.