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Obituary
"Let the white guys sing!"
Doug Sahm played a cosmic and unmistakable Tex-Mex blues for more than 40 years.
By Tracy Santa
[11/24/99]

Column
The evil two books and one video do
A visit to the dark side (and back) courtesy of "The Blair Witch Project," Andy Kaufman and Lynda Barry.
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[11/24/99]

Nothing Personal
Howeird is that?
Stern's lawyers get strict; Flynt breaks ground ... in Ohio; and Drudge pulled by popularity poll? Fox lips sealed. Plus: New Chris Farley Foundation to promote awareness of drug and alcohol abuse ... much like old Chris Farley.
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[11/23/99]

People Feature
I, Anakin
George Lucas is seeking an "extremely intelligent" 19-year-old actor to play Anakin Skywalker in "Episode II." He need look no further than here.
By Matthew Sullivan
[11/23/99]

People Feature
Rupert Sheldrake: The delightful crackpot
Put your paws together for the master of morphic resonance.
By David Bowman
[11/23/99]

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By Larry Kanter

Nov. 24, 1999 | Crushing poverty and unimaginable wealth. Bitter feuds and brilliant collaborations. Ambition bordering on megalomania. A motorcycle crash. A suicide. A $30 million sailboat.

Is this the tale of a computer tycoon or a rock 'n' roll star? Highlights from the life of a business mogul or the outline of a sensational pulp novel? In the case of Jim Clark -- start-up artist extraordinaire, father of computer graphics, pioneer of Web surfing, self-appointed healer of the nation's ailing health-care system -- the answer is all of the above.

The story of any self-made multibillionaire is bound to have more than its share of drama, making startling twists and turns, negotiating deep troughs and scaling vertiginous heights. But if Clark's career has been a roller coaster, it's been an entirely different kind of ride. Rather than piloting the lead car, or even controlling the ride's machinery, Clark has generally been out in front of everyone building the track itself, determining where the damn thing is headed in the first place.

Even if you've never heard of Jim Clark, it's likely that one of his various ventures has touched, and perhaps even altered, your life in some significant way. Ever been wowed by a George Lucas or Steven Spielberg flick? For that you can credit Clark's first company, Silicon Graphics Inc., whose high-powered computers and three-dimensional imaging software transformed the way everything from suspension bridges to jet aircraft to Hollywood movies are made. There's a good chance you're using another of his products at this very moment -- a Web browser made by Netscape, which Clark launched in 1994 and took public a year later, pioneering the now-commonplace practice of Internet firms' successfully selling shares to investors before earning a dime of profit.

More recently, Clark has come calling on your doctor's office with Healtheon Corp., which aims to revolutionize the nation's $1.5 trillion health-care industry, eliminating paperwork and waste by wiring doctors, insurers, pharmacies and patients to one another via the Internet. In the meantime, he triggered the federal government's antitrust investigation into his longtime rival Microsoft Corp. and has launched at least two more start-ups -- MYCFO.com, a personal-finance site for the ultra-rich, and Shutterfly.com, an online photo processing and delivery service.

Bouncing from idea to idea, creating company after company, Clark has accumulated a personal fortune worth billions. That's impressive enough. But along the way, Clark also has managed to redefine the culture of American business, helping to transform what had been a cult of the corporation into a new cult of the entrepreneur.

Among contemporary business figures, few inspire more devotion from their followers than Clark. All he has to do is announce a new idea and the talent -- as well as the money -- comes clamoring for a chance to participate. And why not? Business Week has credited him with having "20/20 foresight." Journalist Michael Lewis just published an entertaining book about the man, in which Clark emerges as a kind of seer, a seeker and, often as not, finder of what Lewis terms "the new new thing" -- "the idea that is a tiny push away from general acceptance and, when it gets that push, will change the world."

Clark is philosophical about the book, in which he's not always depicted in a favorable light. In an Oct. 27 article in the San Francisco Chronicle, he says that Lewis draws him "as a little greedy, and I never envisioned myself that way because I've shared a lot with the others in all the companies I've been involved with." Elsewhere in the article Clark observes, "It's very difficult to see myself in print. It's not a flattering portrayal, but I suppose it's balanced and reasonably fair."

That Clark is a genius is beyond dispute. Yet it's hard not to feel somewhat uneasy about what his talents have wrought. His greatest gift has been an ability to articulate groundbreaking ideas in a way that attracts both start-up capital and technical expertise. The actual execution of those ideas -- the mundane tasks of creating a company, meeting a payroll, getting a product to market -- has generally been left to others, as Clark rushed off to create his next venture. Lewis calls it capitalism as "conceptual art."

That's fine as long as you're coming up with ideas like computer graphics or Internet browsers. The problem is that the high-tech world is now packed with would-be visionaries hawking their own versions of the "new new thing." Venture capitalists, terrified of missing out on the next Netscape, are throwing money at ideas that are ill-formed at best, and often downright dubious.

"There is so much money out there that no one has the luxury of actually developing an idea," a prominent New York venture capitalist, who is currently gambling with $50 million in funds from a major bank, recently told me. "All the market requires now is that you tell a good story."

Next page | Rewriting the rules of American business