BDM  100 Digital Media Overview

Project #8 Pioneers of Digital Media

December 04, 2007

Mary G. Meeker

Mary Meeker, a Wall Street securities analyst and investment banker, at one point had been crowned “Queen of the Net” by Barrons.[1] With such an entitlement it shows that her career unfolded and thrived concurrently as did the World Wide Web. With degree’s in psychology and finance in the eighties Mary Meeker worked for several reputable investment companies covering some aspect of the internet and its web user’s activity. [2]

After 1991 is where her career started to take shape. She joined the team of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter to cover personal computer and new media industries. She was an analyst for Netscape and lead manager for their public offering in 1995. With extensive detail statistics on current internet markets, new dot com startup businesses and web user forecasting, she helped co-write The Internet Report with co worker Chris Depuy  which was a standout trend analysis in the Internet/ E-commerce sectors.  Some have noted that this book became the bible for investors and CEO's alike. In 2000, Meeker was vilified in the press as one of a number of star analysts who were questioned in fraud investigations after the bursting of the dot com bubble. Meeker was not charged with any wrongdoing.2

I chose Mary Meeker because of her contributions to Digital Media, the Internet, investments and securities. I was engaged on how accurate many of her predications and forecasting’s had come to light for many of the companies who have changed the world of the internet forever, big names like, Netscape, Yahoo, AOL, Amazon.com eBay, and more recently Google.  How did she end up with these predications on growing trends, you might ask? To pick a great home in real estate is all about the “location, location, location.” In investments and securities its all about “research, research, research.” Mary Meeker has been an industry leader for internet investing for more than a decade because of her research tactics. For example after she co-wrote the Internet Report, she flew down to San Fransciso and Silicon Valley and spent extensive time with dot com entrepreneurs as well as Netscapes, Marc Andreesen, documenting trends, likes, dislikes, what’s working on the web and what’s not.[3]

She is a trusted source for investor’s CEO’s and current Internet companies as well as start-up’s. This year, October she gave her bullet 15 minute presentation Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco.[4]

Mary Meeker quote:

“When making investment decisions, remember Meeker's mantra: with Internet stocks, there will be only a few huge winners and hundreds of losers. But the wealth created by the winners can more than make up for the mistakes. She calls this theory the "Wal-Marting of the Web."[5]