Cliff Higgerson
The Venture Capitalist Who Wrote the First Check to Fund the Globalization of the Internet, Web & eCommerce
When you hear, “Who envisioned and made the internet?” Many names often come up. Though, in reality, it took countless people over 40 years to lay critical foundations with the DNS/BGP/HTTP/DNS/TCP/IP/SSL/UDP/NCP/HTML software protocols and networking equipment advancements, and that’s undeniable.
But I want to make a point, the Internet was not invented solely by computer scientists and engineers; the Internet was developed in tandem by leadership decision makers in the sciences of economics and finance. Somebody, somewhere, had to understand the value propositions of the proposed technology and decide to pay for it; and then put their hand into their pocket and pull out the money and actually pay for it, up front.
That’s their money at real risk. No guarantees.
And the Internet you know and use exists because Cliff Higgerson is the person most responsible for that decision of economic benefit, and he applied the finances to enable it.
By the 1990s, decades after these foundations were laid, the internet and web we know today, spanning continents and powering eCommerce, weren’t built by a few visionaries alone. It took an ecosystem of dreamers, builders, and most crucially the venture capital financiers to make them a global reality. Cliff Higgerson was the financial engine behind this transformation.
In 1998, when I traveled to Beijing to peer China into the Internet, thus making CERNET a Tier-1 Internet service provider overnight, it wasn’t The People’s Republic of China or Tsinghua University footing the bill, nor even contributing to any of the costs. It was Cliff’s venture capital of $80,000 a month, $960K a year, and $275K paid up front and in advance, from my cost center at Digital Island that paid for it. While Xing Li at Tsinghua advanced China’s internet adoption, Cliff’s funding made it possible; and that’s just one piece of Cliff’s monumental impact.
In November of 1996, Cliff wrote a $300,000 check to seed Digital Island, the company that I co-founded and co-authored the first business plans for. Specifically, with my background in telecom and banking for speculative developments, I authored the projections for the telecom infrastructure expenses and customer revenue financials that Cliff funded on. Those financials were the largest cost and income centers of the company.
By March 1997, Cliff subsequently led our $3.5 million Series-A round, sparking what became $804.8 million cumulatively in total funding. That money didn’t just support ideas, it built the data centers, bought the oceanic and terrestrial cables, routers, servers, and the highly specialized teams that globalized the internet and eCommerce, thus revolutionizing how we communicate and trade.
Before these networks could scale, pioneers laid the conceptual groundwork. These pioneers didn’t just dream, they tested and proved their ideas. But concepts don’t connect continents. You need physical networks; circuits, ports, switches, servers, and teams to manage and support them. These servers weren’t in Stanford, USC, UCLA, or MIT classrooms; we needed costly data centers with massive power, fire suppression, real estate, and security to make it work. Cliff’s funding enabled ≈99% of all internet-accessible users to be on one global network together.
The internet and web are telecommunications platforms built on protocols like TCP/IP and HTTP. Though in 1996, using the internet was like sucking a grapefruit through a straw, and 99.6% of people in the world had no straw at all, literally. It was Digital Island, backed by Cliff, that changed that.
Cliff’s funding was the catalyst. Before global eCommerce became a reliable operating system, companies still walked into banks to wire funds and wrote physical checks to build the systems we now take for granted. His leadership helped fuel Digital Island’s rise to a peak public valuation of roughly $12 billion after its initial public offering, while the company served best-of-class enterprises including Visa, E*TRADE, Cisco, Stanford, Google, Microsoft, MasterCard, Charles Schwab, Compaq, Intel, HP, AOL, Sony, Canon, MLB, and more than 800 others.
This story of the Internet isn’t just about the pioneers who wrote protocols or proved concepts. It’s about the financiers and builders who made them real. Cliff might wear a t-shirt saying, “I didn’t invent the internet or web, but I paid the Lion’s Share to globalize them and enable eCommerce.” That’s the truth.
Cliff and those like him pulled the financial plow to harvest this revolution in human communication and commerce. They deserve their place in history.
Cliff, thank you!
https://www.castileventures.com/team/cliffhiggerson.html
