Starting Excite -- Persistence Pays. Part 1

I love this guy! He talks about getting started w/ Excite ... finding $$, meeting Vinod, etc... Very motivating.
Bnoopy: Persistence Pays. Part 1

Success comes to those that dare to dream dreams and are foolish enough to try and make them come true

Also there is a link to this article about
Vinod Khosla and starting Sun Microsystems

Universities have become our mechanism for credibility. It had worked for DEC, and it is working like a charm for us. Whenever Berkeley or Stanford talks about computing in the future, they talk about Sun, and it is the gospel message coming from an impartial source. Suddenly, every OEM is calling on us because they are hearing from the top research departments around the country that we are the next generation. Although we do not have business credibility, we have technological credibility.

...

We were unlike most start- ups. Most start- ups have everything- - marketing, sales, support, advertising, and PR- - in place even before they have a product to sell. They get up to $600,000 to $800,000 a month of expenses before they've really started selling anything. In that range, given you're starting out with low gross margins because your product costs are high, you've got to start selling $1.5 million worth just to break even in 8 month.

Sun's profitability began to help it attract some experienced managers.