Andrew Weinreich @ SixDegrees: The Lawyer Who Patented Social Networking

<p>Some people stumble onto their startup ideas and become accidental entrepreneurs. That definitely wasn’t the case for Andrew. Andrew knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur, he just didn’t know what kind of company to build.</p><p>Andrew understood that the Internet was going to create lots of new entrepreneurial opportunities, but finding one that wasn't going to run into a lot of competition from existing offline businesses was a challenge. Eventually, Andrew recognized the Internet was going to create new opportunities for networking that hadn't previously existed. It was, in his words, an "inevitability."</p><p>Beating everyone else to the opportunity, in 1997, Andrew launched the Internet's first social networking website. He called it SixDegrees.com, and it was a place where people could connect with their networks and make new connections based on mutual friends.</p><p>For a complete transcript of the episode, <a href="https://latonas.com/blog/web-masters-episode-39-andrew-weinreich/">click here</a>.</p>