Do you remember the day when Netscape became a $2 billion company, or when Amazon upended our online expectations by introducing 1-Click shopping? How about when Napster faced down Metallica and Twitter showed us what was really happening on the streets of Tehran? These are the moments of innovation that changed our world and continue to point us to the future.

1995: The birth of the fast company

It was the IPO pop heard round the world: How Netscape’s triumph signaled the arrival of a new business model—and a new mind-set.

I first realized that August 9, 1995, would be a day to remember when two coworkers bet each other on the opening and closing price of a new stock issue from a Mountain View, California–based company called Netscape Communications. Their excitement was electric, and it only grew as the stock doubled its offering price from $14 to $28 that morning; by the time it started trading after 11 a.m., the stock had risen to $71. It ended the day at $58.25, giving the company a market capitalization of more than $2 billion. Not bad for a 16-month-old startup with just $16 million in lifetime revenues.

That sort of thing simply did not happen, but Netscape’s IPO symbolized many things about the profound changes set to take place in business and culture. Netscape represented a bet on the potential of the Internet to transform society. It was the original Internet platform—something virtually every technology startup now aspires to be. And it was the proto-example of twentysomethings moving to California to create a company and seek their fortune, led by a visionary like Marc Andreessen.

But what came to be young Netscape’s defining characteristic—and its most lasting contribution to business—was speed. At a time when software was still sold on disks in shrink-wrapped boxes, Netscape started releasing beta software on the Internet month after month. It would get feedback from customers and pump out two new versions by the time those software boxes even reached stores. Its pace of innovation—and its rush to an IPO—made it the company to emulate. In November 1995, Fast Company profiled Netscape as the ur-example of a company living the new rules of competition, writing, “In an economy where even breakthrough technologies become obsolete within a few years, where even the deadliest competitors must change their game in the face of changing circumstances, Netscape Time may be the company’s most enduring invention.”