RealNetworks

RealNetworks is the global leader in Internet media delivery. Combining cutting edge technology with premium content, RealNetworks opens the world of rich digital audio and video to more than 250 million unique registered consumers of our products worldwide. The result is a multimedia experience that is truly revolutionary. The number of registered users of RealNetworks' audio and video software reaches 22 million. After graduating from Yale, Glaser had to make a decision. He could continue his education or go to work for Hewlett-Packard Co. A third option remained, but few of Glaser's friends believed he would join a little-known, start-up software company. Glaser proved his friends wrong, and moved to the Pacific Northwest, where he signed on with Seattle-based Microsoft Corp. At Microsoft, Glaser worked with the development team that produced Microsoft Word, the company's highly successful word-processing application. After working on Microsoft Word, Glaser moved to the company's networking group, before ultimately becoming vice-president of Microsoft's multimedia systems group. Glaser spent a decade at Microsoft, participating in the company's explosive rise to global dominance in the software industry. By the fall of 1993, Glaser was ready to build his own company. He enlisted the help of a college friend, David Halperin, and began hatching plans for the creation of what he envisioned as a culturally progressive media company. By 1994, Glaser and Halperin had formed their conduit for delivering socially conscious programming over the Internet, a company they named Progressive Networks. Within months, the founders realized that investors were more interested in the technology that delivered the socially progressive content than the content itself. Accordingly, Glaser and Halperin focused on developing software to deliver media content, which was then in its infancy on the Internet. In the years ahead, Progressive Networks would concentrate on streaming media--technology that delivered audio and video files over the Internet to personal computers. History was made not long after Glaser started his company. In 1995, Progressive Networks broadcast the first live event over the Internet, a baseball game between the Seattle Mariners and the New York Yankees. The event marked the first streaming event on the Internet. By the end of the year--Progressive Networks' first year of sales--the company had generated $1.8 million in revenues. In the wake of the first streaming media event, Glaser brokered several critical deals. He reached an agreement with his former employer, Bill Gates, to have Microsoft distribute RealAudio with every copy of Internet Explorer (Microsoft's Web browser) in 1996. The deal enabled Glaser to dramatically increase his revenue volume for the year, as Progressive Networks finished its second full year of business with $14 million generated in sales. In early 1997, Glaser opened up a massive business arena through a technological development. RealVideo was introduced, enabling users to play videos on the Web. Glaser's biggest coup occurred next, ensuring that Progressive Networks would maintain its place in a now-burgeoning market. Gates, belatedly according to some industry pundits, had begun to realize the potential of streaming media. With vast financial resources at his disposal, the Microsoft chairman could afford to pay to strengthen his company's position in the streaming media industry. He paid $75 million for one of Progressive Networks' rivals, a company named VXtreme Inc. Glaser responded quickly, perhaps fearing that he would be squeezed out of the market just as it was gaining financial legitimacy. Glaser knew he would someday face the increasingly influential Microsoft chairman, a feeling he had had since the day he left Microsoft's Redmond headquarters in 1993. As the summer of 1997 approached, Glaser faced his first great test. By the summer of 1998, Glaser's efforts to stave off an a