Chairman, CEO and Founder myCFO, Inc. Also Founder, Healtheon/WebMD, Netscape Communications,and Silicon Graphics, Inc. – Mountainview, California
Jim Clark is the founder of three of the most successful business start-ups in recent history. His companies, Silicon Graphics, Netscape Communications, and Healtheon/WebMD, have changed the lives of millions. His latest brainstorms with huge potential are Shutterfly (an online photo processing and delivery service), myCFO (a personal financial site for the ultra rich), and involvement with DNA Sciences (a genetic research company). Now a billionaire, Mr. Clark grew up poor in the 1950s in Plainview, Texas. Eager to escape, he dropped out of high school and joined the Navy where he earned his GED and enrolled in college. Moonlighting while working as a associate professor at Stanford University, Mr. Clark designed a computer chip able to process 3-D images in real time. He hired a handful of students and created Silicon Graphics in 1982. The company’s high-powered computers and elaborate graphics packages transformed engineering, NASA, and Hollywood. Mr. Clark met Marc Andreesen, the developer of the first web browser, in 1994 and realized the future was on the Internet. The two founded Netscape Communications and later took it public. Also in the 1990s, Mr. Clark was in a motorcycle accident and also diagnosed with a blood disease. Frustrated with the shortcomings of the healthcare system, he devised a way to use the Internet to eliminate paperwork by linking all the healthcare players to a central depository of information. When merged with WebMD, the company became a comprehensive source for information. Mr. Clark chronicles the rise of the Internet and Netscape’s role in his book, Netscape Time: The Making of the Billion Dollar Start-up That Took On Microsoft. He was also the subject of The New York Times bestseller by Michael Lewis: The New New Thing.
