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Richardson visited Kessler and his wife at their Los Gatos, California, home and pressed him to join, telling Kessler that he wouldn't have to work constantly and could still spend time with his young daughter. That part of the pitch was probably even more unrealistic than Fanning's projected market value for the firm. But Kessler signed on nonetheless, eventually buying more than two hundred thousand shares and imagining himself on the road to riches.

At Napster, Kessler understood some issues very well, and he knew whom to call on other points. But as at Quote.com, Kessler developed few fans underneath him. Some complained that he took credit for technical work that they had done. In one emotional dispute, Kessler vetoed a decision by the rest of the executives to grant Ritter's wish and list him in the section of Napster's website devoted to the company's history. At one time or another, Shawn, Ali Aydar, and even Richardson tried to get rid of Kessler as he failed to meet deadlines to launch new versions of Napster. “I don't think any of them would say, nor do I feel, that I was the best vice president of engineering the company could have had,” said Kessler. But John Fanning protected him, and Kessler would outlast Fanning's two successors as CEO.

In Boston, Ritter was still running the back-end server, and he was reluctant to gamble on a move west. After a series of talks with Richardson, he agreed to fly out and discuss the terms that could change his mind. On the plane, he tapped out the state of things on his laptop. “The current design, version 2.0, is in many respects a hack,” Ritter wrote. “It was a prototype meant to prove a concept, but which unfortunately fell victim to its own success. It is not stable, not scalable in any real sense, and realistically not feature-complete. Version 2.1 has made great strides over version 2.0 in the area of stability. Numerous bugs have been found and squashed, but unfortunately as bugs are fixed, more introduce themselves. . . . The harsh truth is that, realistically, the current server backend is not scalable.”

Ritter made it to the Napster offices about 11 P.M. on a Friday and was met in the conference room by Shawn, Parker, Richardson, Bales, Ali Aydar, Bales's girlfriend, Holly Shin, who was working as Napster's secre-