NetCreations had just 19 employees in June 1999, and five months later it was a public company. The New York firm ran a simple, timely business. Web users signed up to hear about topics they cared about, from cooking to computers, and NetCreations rented those opt-in lists to marketers. In a year when inboxes were filling with junk mail, permission was the selling point. NetCreations went public on Nasdaq that November.

Permission as a Product

Rosalind Resnick and Ryan Scott Druckenmiller founded NetCreations in March 1995. In February 1996 they moved into opt-in email direct marketing and found a business that grew fast with very few staff. Partner websites invited visitors to check a box and pick their interests. NetCreations pooled those addresses into lists by subject and charged marketers for each message sent. Advertisers got readers who had asked to hear from them. Sites shared in the revenue.

Thirteen Dollars, Then Italy

NetCreations priced its offering at $13 a share in November 1999 and listed on Nasdaq under NTCR, with Resnick as chief executive. The company was profitable, earning $1.3 million in the first half of 1999, a rarity among internet listings that year. When the dot-com market collapsed in 2000, its shares fell with everything else on the web. In 2001 Seat Pagine Gialle, the Italian yellow pages publisher, bought NetCreations in a cash deal.

Cover: Interrupted Reading, Jean Baptiste Camille Corot. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a reader lost in the page (mail people chose to read).