James H. Clark
American entrepreneur (1944 - )
- || At The Bottom
1961 -- Trouble seemed to find Jim Clark wherever he happened to be; when it didn't, Clark sought it out on his own. He had grown up in a poor family in Plainview, Texas. Abandoned by his father at a young age, Clark had a chip on his shoulder and gained a reputation as a troublemaker. At times, his misbehavior was relatively harmless, as when he smuggled a skunk into a school dance. At other times, his misadventures were more dangerous. Once, for example, he set off a small bomb on a school bus; another time, he set of a string of firecrackers inside another student's locker, a prank that nearly caused a fire. When he was a junior, he swore at a teacher in class, telling her to "go to hell" after she upbraided him for dodging his assignment for the day. He received an out-of-school suspension; rather than come back, he decided he'd had enough, and dropped out to enlist in the Navy. At training camp, Clark continued to act out. Given an aptitude test for math, he filled in all the optical scan bubbles for every question and was reprimanded; shipped off to sea for nine months, he faced constant bullying and humiliation from his shipmates and superiors, who spared few opportunities to let him know how stupid he was. Clark seethed, vowing to avenge his treatment somehow.
- || At The Top
1999 -- It's not often that someone has enough spare change lying around to donate $150 million to a university to found a new department and erect a new building, but that's precisely what Jim Clark did in October 1999, when he offered a huge endowment to Stanford, where he had once taught computer science. By the late 1990s, Clark was a billionaire who had founded numerous successful computer startups, including Netscape, Shutterfly, MYCFO.com, and Healtheon. A "serial entrepreneur", Clark was known as a hotheaded, restless seeker, someone who -- in the words of one author -- was always trying to identify the "new, new thing" before everyone else. His success with Netscape was arguably his most notable achievement, as the web browser launched him onto the Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans by the mid 1990s (when Netscape stock rose from $6 to $171 per share). His gift to Stanford was an acknowledgement that genius and innovation are not simply the result of individuals like Clark, but are instead fostered by educational institutions that can help change the world by giving creative men and women a direction for the future.
- || The Comeback
After his first nine-month voyage as a Navy enlistee, Clark re-took the aptitude test he had deliberately botched the previous year. This time, he did well, and -- encouraged by a senior officer -- began taking classes in math and science at Tulane University in New Orleans. "I became excited by the challenge of understanding how things work, understanding the world", he told a journalist in 1994. By his 30th birthday, Clark had acquired a PhD in computer science from the University of Utah. He admitted years later that part of his motivation stemmed from wanting to prove his doubters wrong. Regardless, after earning his doctorate he spent most of the 1970s in academia, teaching at the New York Institute of Technology, the University of California Santa Cruz and Stanford University. In 1982 he left the academic world and co-founded Silicon Graphics, a company that produced hardware and software useful for graphic design and visual effects in film. Clark invented a new chip that allowed designers to produce three-dimensional graphics -- an innovation that transformed Hollywood animation, auto and aircraft design and video games among other things. A little over a decade later, Clark lost control of the company and left. With Marc Andreesen -- who had designed Mosaic, the original internet browser -- Clark founded a company called Netscape, which kicked off the great Internet gold rush.
