In the previous two questions, would it affect your thinking to know that, of 38 million shares total in Netscape, only 5 million were actually offered to the public? The remaining 33 million were retained by various founders of the company. For example, 24-year-old Marc Andreessen held a million shares, so he picked up $58.3 million for his 16-month effort (and that didn’t include options he held to buy more shares).

Data from Question 6

In the previous question, would it affect your thinking to know that, at the time of the IPO, Netscape was only 16 months old, had only $16.6 million in revenues for the first half of the year, had never earned a profit, and was giving away its primary product over the Internet for free?

Data from Question 5

The Netscape IPO was severely underpriced. This occurred even though the offering price of $28 had already been doubled from a planned $14 just weeks earlier. Should Netscape be upset with Morgan Stanley over the remaining underpricing?