One Techie Likes To Give The Old Way

By Karl Taro Greenfeld

Jim Clark, 55, is the first person ever to start three companies that each grew to be worth more than $1 billion--an achievement celebrated in Michael Lewis' best-selling book, The New New Thing. Clark saw in primitive computer graphics chips the potential for powerful new workstations built by Silicon Graphics. He looked at a simple interface for websites, and turned it into the Netscape Web browser. And he most recently has exploited the potential of the Web for dispensing medical information through a company called Healtheon. Each of these ideas has netted Clark a cool billion or so. Shouldn't such a visionary come up with a similarly new way of giving those bucks away?

Well, no. Clark has bestowed his money the old-fashioned way--by attaching his name to a building at Stanford University, his alma mater. His $150 million grant, establishing the Jim C. Clark Center for Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, reflects his belief that just as computer technology has been driving today's economy, biotech will power it over the next 40 years. "Some people say you should give where the need is greatest," he says, shrugging. "But that's the job for government. For me, with only a few billion, I have more impact targeting a specific priority."

Clark also wanted to reward Stanford, whose labs he used while engineering the chip for his Silicon Graphics workstations. And this was the sort of philanthropic gesture that would still leave him time to have fun running companies, building yachts and flying helicopters.

Clark has a personal insight into why some tech multimillionaires postpone serious charitable giving. At one point in 1998, he watched the value of his Netscape stock erode from $2 billion to $200 million. And other wealthy techies have seen similar wild swings in their personal fortunes. Explains Clark: "When you see your net worth drop like that, you think, 'If this keeps going, I'm going to have to sell my airplane.'"

Clark is critical of some of his Silicon Valley brethren who haven't been as generous, despite their multibillion-dollar net worth. He hopes his gift will spur other tech billionaires to action, particularly Yahoo founders Jerry Yang and David Filo, who don't discuss specifics of any giving they may have done--and who Clark believes have been too frugal. "These guys actually ran the Yahoo servers out of Stanford," says Clark. "They should be giving something back. These guys are young, but they've got more money than me. Or take Larry Ellison; he should be doing more." But Clark remains optimistic: "These new-money guys, first they have to get a couple of houses, the plane. At that point they'll think about, How can I do something more impacting?"

--K.T.G.