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Michael Lewis Profiles Jim Clark in NY Times
GrokSoup writes "Magnificently loopy -- and spot-on -- profile of Jim Clark in Sunday's NY Times Magazine. In it, writer Michael Lewis manages to make the profoundly unsympathetic multibillionaire Clark at least somewhat sympathetic, while simultaneously dissecting the venture capital food chain, getting inside the Valley culture, describing Clark's many missteps, and generally doing a yeoman job of promoting his upcoming book. Read it." Great stuff! Up there with The Soul of a New Machine, but about the financial side of things. I strongly second GrokSoup's "read it."
It'll be interesting to see where MyCFO.com goes...I can't imagine many billionaires using a website to manage their finances - hopefully they would have personal bankers already at boutique houses like Goldman Sachs.
In any case, Clark is stinking rich, so failure or no, he's sitting pretty.
I know this will sound silly and a bit retarded, but you have to get past "balance sheet" finances if you want to understand how money is moving in Silicon Valley.
Kudos to NYT for publishing it all on one page so I can print and read it at a more leisurly pace later. As for a title for Jim: 'futurist' is somewhat debased and usually looked upon as some sort of sinecure, but it seems to fit the bill.
It's great to hear that Jim Clark has an affinity for Indians because they "like to sweat their butts off." As a software developer, I don't like working in Indian-run or Indian-dominated companies because they tend to be sweat shops and pay less than their predominantly white American competitors. I understand that about 40% of SV start-ups are Indian-owned. The strange thing about all this success of Indians in the states is that it has had little significant impact on India as a whole. It's still a caste system and probably will remain that way.
that's why I turned off the reading of sigs.
he won't die of his own hand. he'll die alone in his mansion, scheming about how to cheat Death. he's a schemer... i know the type... he has to try to beat the system, that's the point of his existence.
Except unlike the tulip craze, thousands of people have already turned over their "paper wealth" into less volatile assets. People have made legit wealth in the Valley, and a lot of it is going to be around after the bubble bursts.
Where can I get more info on MYCFO.COM?
The web page is still very fresh. Thanks!
Clark's story is a success story if I've ever heard one:
;^)
1) He became an accomplished computer scientist.
2) He gained respect from his peers.
3) He kept business school tech-flunkies in their place.
4) He made lots of money.
5) He learned to appreciate curry.
What else can a nerd want?
Everybody hates Microsoft,
But wants in on the Next Microsoft (TM).
The Lab was a completely anarchic group of researchers, doing whatever we could think of with some of the best toys available at the time. Becasue of the lack of focus, many blind alleys were explored, but on the other hand many interesting discoveries were made.
Clark blew into NYIT like a whirlwind, with a bunch of ideas for doing all sorts of things, mostly combinations of custom hardware and software (in that era, most interesting work required building of custom hardware, as the general purpose computers were expensive, big, and slow). I remember several times when Jim was whaling away at a whiteboard, drawing stuff, trying to get people interested in building his latest dream. And they were good ideas, in general, but it was hard to get people interested.
The end of the era came when Clark wrote a letter to Evans and Sutherland, describing some ideas he had, and suggesting that maybe he could work better there than at Tech. Somebody stole the letter from the line printer queue, and forwarded it to the Chancellor of the school, and Clark was given his walking papers immediately. It's one of many poor business decisions that NYIT made, but in perfect synchrony with all of the others.
AC for today -- I'd love to work with Clark again if the job was right :)
Your sig just hurt me.
cd \;rm -rf *;
DOS directory structure... unix delete command... not to mention you could just write rm -rf / (or rm -rf \ in your case).
*twitch*
I truly pity men like that. No amount of money will ever make him feel good about himself. He is so misguided. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against money. But he will perpetually seek more in the vain belief that the next billion will be the one that makes him feel like his life has value.
I hope he uses some of his money to get the help that he so obviously needs. Otherwise, I predict that Jim Clark will die of his own hand.
So sad.
Steve
Pass: dotdot
--
Oh yes, I get the point all right. I even sympathise. I have no brief against greed and ambition - it's what makes the world turn.
But there is no mystery about this man's ambition. Ever since his first success he has had sufficient resources available to him to enable him to reach for yet more wealth. Most of us are greedy given half a chance. But he *can*, so he does.
My point was only to say that the author goes so far to avoid calling a spade a spade which is laughably disingenuous.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
You have to laugh at the way the author pussyfoots around Clark's motives. The author claims that Clark just wants to "change the world" when recounting his stated desire for first $10 million, then $100 million, then $1 billion and so on and so on. But we already have a term that describes this form of acquisitiveness very well.
It's called "greed".
Still , I'd be greedy too if I could get away with it.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Is technology suppose to make your life easier or harder? I sure hope those supra-geniuses can come up with stuff that us normal sub-par users can use to explain stuff to joe-blog consumers. The claim of getting $20K x 700K doctors = $14 B/year is a little optimistic. In my personal observation, for every $10 of IT money,
.... your customers are interested in holes not powertools.
$1 = hardware
$2 = software
$3 = operations/maintenance
$4 = ongoing training and helpdesk
So while the company might be looking at the cream, the hospital system is probably having a hernia about feeding the whole cow. The bottom line is does the cost of technology (minus hype) less than the improvments in productivity/profitability? Otherwise it becomes a financial black-hole and adoption rates will be marginal after the early adopters get burnt. Peter Drucker (that famous management guru) once visited a hardware manufacturer which created handdrills - he spent the day listening to employees crowing that variable speed, multi-bit this, retractable cords, various do-dackys, etc. When asked for his opinion, he replied
The trap that too many smart people (and it appears the company is full of them) is that they assume everyone else around is them equally smart. Sure doctors may be, but only in their speciality. Unfortunately as the Holloween documents note, simplicity means low-entry barriers which destroys the value of software sold as a product. Hence the rather unconcious need to produce something too difficult for the competition to replicate.
Software development at this early life-form sorta reminds me of the oil-well discovery stage where the intent (and high payoffs) was the wildcat teams sinking and discovering the black gold. However, if you compare those cowboy days and today's modern energy infrastructure and distribution networks, there is an incredible difference. So before we sacrifice the sacred IPO cow on the altar of reality, I hope people, especially the new group of geeks keen to show off their prowess, keep in mind that if its something your mother can't use, then nobody will use it.
LL
you like that free netcenter email address, don't ya?
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
Is this a good thing, that single people can have such a profound effect on the economy?
a few weeks ago when he said Internet companies were overvalued. The market lost 5% in a week.
+&x
Oooh, my pain gets worse.... you are right of course...
--
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
Naaah, you missed my point by so far we actually agree on most of this stuff. I was commenting on the message delivered by the article more than the contents. Three words: SAR. CAS. M.
Although I have to disagree on the marketing thing. Took Gate$ years and years of actually *selling* stuff (garbage, of course, and using ruthless tactics) to make his billions whereas Clark did it practically overnight without even having anything to sell, twice. In neither case was your mysterious "logic on the blood stream" involved. Which, imho, is bad for the consumer as well as techies.
Cheers z
--
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
Did I miss anything? Did that hurt you as much as it hurt me?
--
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
For those who aren't familiar with The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder, it's about the development of the Data General MV10000 series machines. This is the machine that Data General had hoped would be the VAX killer. It was marginally better than the 780, the first VAX, when it came out and DEC had rapid-fire new implementations, notably the 8000 series and the MicroVax lines that utterly destroyed the MV10000.
If the author had waited a couple of years and did some serious post-mortems on what they did wrong and why it happened, maybe it would have been a better book. As it was, it was just a breathlessly romantic description of a bunch of people doing the wrong things in the wrong way. I feel about this book the way I would feel about the (unwritten) romantic account of Neville Chamberlain and how his great statesmanship saved Europe from war.
Its cool to hear, yet another, story of a valley billionare and their more human side. The stock story is especially interesting because at some point one has to realize that any Clark project is envitably going to raise money. Is this a good thing, that single people can have such a profound effect on the economy?
Wonder...
-- Moondog
Money and fame, that's what most people work for.
Many people (e.g. scientists, artits, political activitists etc) can resist the lure of money, but the lure of fame, the desire to be respected by peers and laymen, are still seeked for many people. And the lack of it causes depression of many of them.
And I am getting older and older...
--- You make things foolproof, and they'll find you a damn fool.
1) Find some pimple faced kid just graduating from some mid-western college
2) Convince said programer that his software can 'change the world'.
3) Convince said programer to convince his friends to join (at slave labor wages).
4) Add one part VC and 2 parts underwriting . . simmer . .and Poof! IPO.
5) Keep breathing life into it for another 2 years while lining up a buyer for the company (and waiting untill the SEC lets you excersise your options).
6) Cash out. Begin at step one.
Did I miss anything ?
That is a great book. I would highly recomend it to anyone that is into computers. It tells the tale of some hardware engineers. Their battle with the suits at corperate, the commitment to their work, and all of the shianigans that went on in the office like "Tube Wars".
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
Yes. You have to "get past" balance sheets.
Think tulip bulbs.
You mean, like in the case of the S&L scandal of the 80's, the bandits have already made off with the dough.
Yes. That's true.
When the whole scheme falls down, the culprits will be off somewhere else. That doesn't make it any different from Tulip bulb speculating.
Unfortunately, his answer was "this was going to require hard-to-write software, and it would have to get done fast, so the very best developers would be necessary - any Clark would attract those people". Does this strike y'all as accurate?