Peter L. S. Currie (born 1956) is a

business Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or Trade, buying and selling Product (business), products (such as goods and Service (economics), services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for pr ...

executive who was the

chief financial officer The chief financial officer (CFO) is an officer of a company or organization that is assigned the primary responsibility for managing the company's finances, including financial planning, management of financial risks, record-keeping, and financ ...

for

Netscape Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was onc ...

from 1995 to 1999. Currie has been described by '' Wall Street Journal'' reporter Jessica Vascellaro as one of the "Silicon Valley wise men". He was among the advisors to Facebook CEO

Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born ) is an American business magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding the social media website Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.), o ...

about business matters in 2009. He is an investor in Internet start-ups and serves on the boards of numerous firms. He is president of Currie Capital and was a charter trustee of

Phillips Academy ("Not for Self") la, Finis Origine Pendet ("The End Depends Upon the Beginning") Youth From Every Quarter Knowledge and Goodness , address = 180 Main Street , city = Andover , state = Ma ...

; from July 2012 to June 2020, he served as the president of the school's board of trustees.

Early years

Currie graduated from

in Andover in 1974 and earned a B.A. degree from Williams College in 1978 and an M.B.A. degree from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. He worked in various capacities at Morgan Stanley including holding the title of Principal from 1982 to 1989. He held various management positions at McCaw Cellular from 1989 to 1995 before joining Netscape.

Netscape rise and fall

Netscape was a key player that "fueled the Internet revolution," according to a report in " The New York Times," and Currie was an executive vice president who worked under its CEO

James L. Barksdale James Love Barksdale (born January 24, 1943) is an American executive who served as the president and Chief executive officer, CEO of Netscape from January 1995 until the company merged with AOL in March 1999. Early life James Barksdale was born ...

and founder

Marc Andreessen Marc Lowell Andreessen ( ; born July 9, 1971) is an American entrepreneur, investor, and software engineer. He is the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and general partner of Silicon ...

. Netscape developed the Secure Sockets Layer Protocol or ''SSL'' for securing online communication which is still widely used as well as JavaScript. Currie became its chief financial officer in 1995 when the company went public. He was Chief Administrative Officer at Netscape from July 1997 until March 1999. In addition to financial management, Currie was responsible for human resources, information technology, facilities, and operations departments. Currie owned at least 37,500 shares of stock in Netscape which he sold in 1996, according to one report. Netscape was valued at $5 billion in November 1995. In 1999, Netscape was bought by

America Online AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...

and became a holding company. Netscape was seen as the first Internet superstar which had a meteoric rise but the firm was undone by numerous forces including well-established software firms such as Microsoft. In a conference in 2005, Currie described how "hectic and crazy things were" during the tumultuous years in the mid 1990s.

Other ventures

In 1999, Currie and Barksdale and others formed a venture capital firm called Barksdale Group to invest in business start-ups, and raised at least $180 million according to one report. As an investor and consultant, he focused on the enterprise software sector of the business. Currie invested in an Internet start-up called Flipboard in 2010. Currie claims affiliations with Corsair Communications, Critical Path, Inkling, Listen.com, Kodak Imaging Network, Kontiki, IPVALUE Management,

Oracle America Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The company sells da ...

, Tellme Networks, Zantaz, InfoSpace.com, Clearwire, CNET, Safeco, and Palamon Capital Partners. He serves on the board of directors for oilfield services giant Schlumberger. In 2016, Twitter released Currie from its board. Currie's advice was sought by Facebook co-founder and chief executive officer

in 2010.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Currie, Peter Financial advisors Silicon Valley people American Internet celebrities Phillips Academy alumni American venture capitalists Williams College alumni Stanford Graduate School of Business alumni American business executives American chief financial officers 1956 births Living people Directors of Twitter, Inc.