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Success Quote by Jim Barksdale

"Our people are excited about building solutions, and it's rewarding to see how much fun Netscape employees have doing something they think is relevant and important"

About this Quote

Netscape’s self-mythology is doing a lot of work here: the company isn’t just shipping software, it’s staging a morale argument. When Jim Barksdale talks about “our people” being “excited about building solutions,” he’s packaging a particular 1990s Silicon Valley ethic into management-speak that still reads familiar today. “Solutions” is a deliberately frictionless word; it dodges the messier reality that products are bets, markets are chaotic, and “fixing” the world often means rearranging power. The language isn’t accidental. It turns commerce into problem-solving and, by extension, turns the company into something like a public service.

The second half - “rewarding to see how much fun…doing something they think is relevant and important” - is the real tell. “Fun” is presented as proof of virtue: happy employees become evidence that the mission is righteous. Yet Barksdale slips in a subtle qualifier: “they think.” It’s a small hedge that reveals the managerial stance underneath the enthusiasm. The employees’ sense of relevance is valuable not only emotionally but instrumentally; belief fuels velocity, long hours, and loyalty in an industry that runs on urgency.

Context matters. Netscape was a flagship of the early web boom, selling speed and inevitability while facing existential pressure from Microsoft. In that climate, internal culture becomes a competitive weapon: excitement as strategy, purpose as retention. Barksdale’s intent is to celebrate builders, but also to recruit, reassure investors, and signal that Netscape’s edge isn’t just code - it’s a workforce convinced it’s on the right side of history.

Quote Details

TopicTeam Building
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Barksdale, Jim. (2026, January 16). Our people are excited about building solutions, and it's rewarding to see how much fun Netscape employees have doing something they think is relevant and important. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/our-people-are-excited-about-building-solutions-83590/

Chicago Style
Barksdale, Jim. "Our people are excited about building solutions, and it's rewarding to see how much fun Netscape employees have doing something they think is relevant and important." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/our-people-are-excited-about-building-solutions-83590/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Our people are excited about building solutions, and it's rewarding to see how much fun Netscape employees have doing something they think is relevant and important." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/our-people-are-excited-about-building-solutions-83590/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

Jim Barksdale

Jim Barksdale (born January 24, 1943) is a Businessman from USA.

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