David Andrews Interview
If you ever spent time in WorldsAway or VZones from 1999 through to 2006, you may have heard the name David Andrews.
Originally brought in to take over the reins of the WorldsAway Products and Services Group at Fujitsu in early 1998, David took over a division that was operating at a $3.5 million loss. He was given a mandate to resolve this or shut the service down. He then went on to restructure everything, achieving breakeven within three months and profitability in just six.
At that point, David could see that despite becoming profitable, Fujitsu were losing interest in the product and so he lead a management buyout to take over the WorldsAway group, exclusively license the WorldsAway technology from Fujitsu to service the western market and take the company public on the NASDAQ via a reverse merger.
This is what became Inworlds.com, Inc for a short period and then Avaterra.com, Inc.
From then on, David would lead the company through an explosive period of growth, all the way up until the dot-com bubble burst in the year 2000 when investors started pulling funding across the board and unfortunately this hit Avaterra to the point where the company was functionally out of cash.
David made plans to keep the Zones going at this time before departing and moving forward, but the situation was unstable and so members stayed in touch with him and asked for his help.
Eventually, David would end up returning in 2001, making an agreement with Fujitsu Limited in Japan to operate the service indefinitely with no licensing fees or termination which was a huge win. It meant the service could be financially viable and the community would get to keep their home and stay connected.
If you look at the first period from 1995-2000 as the golden age of WorldsAway in terms of development, activity and excitement then 2002-2006 was the second golden age of the service under David's second tenure. Active development resumed again. There was constant communication between members and himself to the point where he would even guest on the inworld radio shows hosted by HandsomeDJ. The artwork program was expanded to allow members to create and submit their own artwork for use inworld which had never been done before.
During 2000/2001 when things were uncertain, people became suspicious of the management of the company and when David eventually came back, this suspicion and concern still remained. He remained a divisive figure in the community and likely does to this day.
Speaking on a personal level, while I don't think things were perfect, it's pretty clear to me that had David not intervened at Fujitsu when he did, WorldsAway as we knew it would've likely gone offline forever in 1999, leaving only fellow licensed worlds J-Chat in Japan and Glass City in Korea online (J-Chat shuttered in January 2010 and Glass City closed down sometime in 2005/2006 respectively).
I hope that this interview helps to shed some light on what was going on back then. There was so much promise, a lot of unrealized potential but through it all, a community that endured and was unlike nothing before or since.
You can read the interview here or check out our Interviews page for more.
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