Tom Evslin, self-described "internet radical," recalls his time at Microsoft in the early 1990s, when the company built Exchange Server to counter Lotus Notes. Bill Gates funded Exchange heavily because he feared Notes could become a platform rivaling Windows. Evslin's faction of internet enthusiasts wanted product launches delayed until Office, Exchange and NT were internet-ready; Gates refused, suspecting the team merely wanted excuses for being late.

Evslin was responsible for Exchange's gateways connecting to other mail systems such as CompuServe and MCI Mail. One gateway received little attention: the SMTP gateway for internet mail. Soon, requests for it flooded in, because corporate engineers were already communicating over the internet even though their employers officially deemed it unsafe.

On the client side, the Exchange team wanted rich formatting in email, like in Word, but kept two separate formatting engines — Word and the Outlook client never merged as Evslin had hoped.

Evslin later joined AT&T to develop its internet strategy. He argued the carrier, which harbored ambitions of being a content provider, should simply become an ISP with all-you-can-eat pricing. Against internal claims that a new service needed seven years, he launched WorldNet fast and adapted. Demand grew so quickly that sign-ups had to be throttled to avoid an "America On Hold" reputation. His next idea, voice over IP, proved unsellable inside AT&T, so in 1997 he left to found ITXC, a wholesale VoIP carrier.