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days was as overstuffed as that of the public-relations specialists who tried to outshout or outflirt each other into the minds of the nearly as alarming number of new technology journalists. Many PR pros straight out of college—some of them hired by start-ups that had yet to find a CEO—would harangue reporters even at tiny websites with offers of hot exclusives. Often those stories turned out to be the release of version 1.1 of an unknown piece of software or a vague partnership deal in which no money was changing hands. But the unprecedented amount of cash poured into dealing with the press made sense at the time. Given the speed with which angel and venture investments were taking place and the slim evidentiary basis behind them, a clipping or two in a publication that an investor had heard of—even a single sentence in such a clipping—could make the difference between a multimillion-dollar round of funding and the company's founders looking for work.

So it is all the more surprising that Napster had no in-house public-relations person at all until February 2000, well after the record companies' lawsuit. When a record-industry spokesman or executive would talk to journalists and condemn Napster as sanctioned theft, communism, or the work of the devil, the reporter would dutifully call Napster for a response. The secretary who picked up the phone at Napster would then tell the reporter that no one was responsible for dealing with the press. She would get a message to Eileen Richardson—would the reporter mind checking back later to see if Richardson had responded? When there was no response, the story ran without it. But Richardson had reasons for this unorthodox approach.

In part she was preoccupied with other concerns, including hiring executives, sorting out Napster's messy capital structure, and getting more funding to keep the servers running. She also didn't have good answers to the reporters' questions, since after reading up on the law, she was increasingly worried that Napster would lose in court. And too much enterprising reporting might turn up John Fanning's spotty background, the lack of a business plan, or the antiestablishment ethic in the office.

But mainly Richardson was sticking to the October strategy memo's playbook: bob and weave until Napster had something serious to bargain with. From early on, there was little need for PR when Napster was growing by leaps and bounds like the e-mail system Hotmail had, with-

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