Reed Magazine February 2003
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e-tailing it out of here

Esteban Gutierrez ’94 rode shotgun during Webvan’s
wild three-year ride from the showroom to the chop shop


by David Shafer
Portraits by Owen Carey

You may remember your first computer, perhaps a Tandy—or, if you were lucky, maybe someone’s dad had an Apple IIe. Esteban Gutierrez, 16 years old in 1988, had a Commodore 64 in his San Diego bedroom. No great shakes there. But he also had a 300-baud modem he had picked up at a swap meet.

This meant that, while you were playing Choplifter or Brickout, he was going online before the phrase had even been coined. While you were making “Happy Birthday” banners with Print Shop and a chattering dot-matrix, Gutierrez was visiting bulletin boards to play Dungeons & Dragons.

He never imagined that those early days of computer communication would, 10 years later, make him a paper millionaire and give him a front-row seat to the most magnificent dot-com collapse in history.

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Reed Magazine February
Page one: you are here go to page two go to page three go to page 4 Link to Reed Mag  Home
2003