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Book Report: The New New Thing
A Silicon Valley Story
by Cliff Notz

His story starts in a small town in Texas. Raised in near-poverty conditions, he was kicked out of high school for being a troublemaker and joined the Navy. His talent in mathematics was soon discovered, and he was encouraged to go to college. He earned multiple degrees in physics and computer science, including a PhD. He was soon teaching at Stanford University in the late seventies, where he designed a unique computer chip he called the Geometry Engine. His chip enabled graphical processing never before possible.

With the help of a few students, he started Silicon Graphics. As the company grew and became successful, he became more frustrated and detached. SGI become old news and he searched for the new thing, something that would change the way things are done. He met Marc Andressen, a 22 year-old graduate from Illinois, who had developed a graphical interface for the Internet (Mosaic). Clark saw the potential, and started up one of the first, and certainly most famous Internet companies.

In starting up Netscape, Jim Clark revolutionized the way new companies were funded. Rather than go to the venture capitalists, hat in hand, he came to them with an offer, a steep offer by their estimate, and Kleiner Perkins was just the kind of leading VC that took him up on the offer. It ended up making them over half a billion dollars. Almost immediately after starting Netscape, he urged the company to go public. His sole intention in pulling an IPO was to raise enough capital to build the largest single-masted sailboat in the world, Hyperion. He ended up doing both. In fact, he spent more time programming SGI workstations to sail the boat than running his companies (for which he'd hired a talented team including top-notch CEOs).

Soon after becoming bored with Netscape, he looked around for the next new thing. This time, it was developing a software solution that would revolutionize the healthcare industry. Nobody that knew the industry had ever thought of trying it, many thought he was crazy. Engineers from SGI and Netscape beat down his doors to join in and be a part of "ClarkWorld." The road was rocky, however, as the engineers knew nothing about healthcare, yet were tasked with building a functional solution in six months. They did it. As Clark pushed for another IPO, so he could make his next billion, the stock market collapsed. That only delayed the inevitable wealth by about 8 months. Both Netscape and Healtheon broke stock market opening day records.

Today, Jim Clark is worth over $10 billion, his goal was to earn more than Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, so he could retire. He's done that too. Rather than retire, he refocused his energy on the new new thing, which in this case, was a Web-enabled financial site for the uber wealthy: myCFO. The site would manage personal wealth starting at $10 million and up, for a $50,000 annual fee. The fund would be used to increase buying power for the wealthy. Estimated at $10 trillion, the fund could change the way financial institutions work. We'll have to see if he hits his fourth consecutive home run.

Some think Jim Clark was lucky, I think he was smart enough to create a vision, and let talented people make it a reality. Timing had everything to do with it as well. No other time in history could have provided the mix of technology and wealth. Not only was he one of the first to exploit the Internet's potential, he led the boom in the Internet economy by pushing back on VCs and structuring deals that empowered those that created the software (engineers like himself).

He is a revolutionary thinker, and will not stand for second best. One call to a lawyer late one night in the late nineties led to the reopening of the DOJ monopoly case against Microsoft. Clark was one of the few that could articulate the true importance of Microsoft dominating the browser market. He's made many wealthy, and some crazy, but he's changed the way we do business, and will probably continue to do so well beyond his time on Earth.

Buy the book and read it yourself.