Viaweb

Cambridge, Massachusetts
Acquired by Yahoo!

In 1995, Paul Graham and Robert Morris created Viaweb, one of the first web applications — software living on a server, accessed entirely through the web — a radical idea at the time. The platform let anyone build an online store using only a browser. It was the beginning of e-commerce as we know it.

Viaweb’s merchants — from major catalog brands to niche sellers — were bringing their businesses into a medium that was nothing like what they knew. Photography had to be reimagined for the screen, product catalogs restructured as databases, customer service rethought for the web. For many, it was less a technical challenge than a conceptual leap.

While studying at Harvard, I joined Viaweb and worked across every team in our small, fast-moving company. I worked with merchants from sales and onboarding through ongoing support — studying how they experienced our product, building the service and knowledge infrastructure they relied on as they brought their businesses online, and training support staff as the company grew. I brought that understanding to every part of the company, making sure everything we offered was built around what people actually needed.

Viaweb grew to serve more than 1,500 merchants and was acquired by Yahoo! for $49 million in 1998, becoming Yahoo! Store — the platform that introduced online commerce to an entire generation of businesses. Paul Graham's experience building Viaweb directly inspired Y Combinator, the startup accelerator behind Airbnb, Stripe, Dropbox, and thousands of other companies.