Clark, James (Jim) H

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CLARK, JAMES (JIM) H.

James H. (Jim) Clark is best known as the co-founder of Netscape Communications Corp., the up-start World Wide Web browser firm that battled Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer and eventually merged with America Online (AOL). Clark also founded two other billion-dollar ventures. Long before his days at Netscape, Clark created Silicon Graphics, the pioneer of three-dimensional computer graphics technology. Clark's third brainchild, Heal-theon Corp., which eventually merged with WebMD to form Healtheon/WebMD, grew into a leading health industry Web site offering health information to consumers, as well as electronic transaction processing for medical facilities and physician groups.

While a computer science professor at Stanford University in the late 1970s, Clark developed the Geometry Engine, a three-dimensional graphics chip. In 1981, he resigned from his position at Stanford to start his own business for developing and marketing the chip. Clark formally established Silicon Graphics a year later. The new firm launched the first three-dimensional terminal, called the IRIS 1000, in 1983. Clark chose IRIS as the terminal's name to reflect his technology's focus on appealing to the sense of sight. In 1984, Clark developed IRIS 1400, the industry's first three-dimensional workstation, which sold for $75,000. Recognizing his limitations as a manager, Clark appointed Edward McCracken, a former executive at Hewlett-Packard, as president of Silicon Graphics.

Clark incorporated his company in 1986. By then, the firm was the leading maker of high-end three-dimensional workstations, which it marketed mainly to technical and scientific organizations. Believing diversification was key to the company's success, McCracken decided to place Silicon Graphics in direct competition with industry leaders like Sun Microsystems by manufacturing less expensive workstations. In 1987, Clark and his engineers added reduced instruction set computing (RISC) chips to the company's terminals. The Personal IRIS, the first personal graphics workstation to hit the market, was shipped in 1988, as was the IRIS POWER Series of compatible multiprocessing workstations. To generate capital for new product development, Clark divested 20 percent of Silicon Graphics' stock to Control Data for roughly $68.5 million. He also licensed the IRIS Graphic Library to IBM Corp. in an attempt to entice software vendors to develop programs that would run on Silicon Graphics workstations.

By the early 1990s, Silicon Graphics had made its way to the Fortune 500, and sales had reached $550 million. Software programs available for Silicon Graphics workstations totaled more than 1,400. Increasing tension with McCracken prompted Clark to leave his firm in 1994. He considered investing his earnings into an interactive television venture. However, after meeting 22-year-old Marc Andreessen—who had developed the Mosaic graphic user interface (GUI) program for World Wide Web browsing with a group of fellow University of Illinois students—Clark decided to turn his attention to the Internet. Clark and Andreessen agreed to launch Mosaic Corp. in April of 1994 with $3 million of Clark's money and additional venture capital from investor John Doerr. A few months later, Clark agreed to change the firm's name to Netscape when the University of Illinois claimed they had rights to the name Mosaic, since the technology was developed when Andreessen had worked there.

In October of 1994, Clark and Andreessen offered AT&T executive Jim Barksdale a seat on Nets-cape's board. Three months later, they talked him into running Netscape. Although the firm wasn't yet profitable, Clark convinced Andreessen and Barksdale into taking the firm public in 1995 in what amounted to one of the most lucrative initial public offerings (IPO) in industry history. Many analysts consider Clark and Andreessen's launch of Navigator, Nets-cape's free Web browser, as crucial to the advent of the Internet revolution. According to Charlotte Dunlap in Computer Reseller News, "Clark helped launch the Internet craze by commercializing the government-based network's first GUI." Less than a year after Netscape's IPO, Navigator was serving roughly 80 percent of the Web's browser market. That success was short-lived, however, thanks to Microsoft's launch of its Internet Explorer browser.

Clark continued to work for Netscape as it battled Microsoft in what became known as the "browser wars." By 1997, Microsoft's Internet Explorer, sold along with the Windows 95 operating system, had reduced Netscape's browser market share by nearly 50 percent. When Netscape filed a complaint alleging that Microsoft's strategy of bundling Explorer with Windows 95 was anti-competitive, the U.S. Department of Justice ruled that Microsoft must offer a version of Windows 95 unbundled from Internet Explorer. Although that decision was later overturned in an appeal, the litigation sparked a wide reaching investigation of Microsoft's alleged monopolist tactics. In 2000, the computer industry giant was found guilty and ordered to split into two companies, a verdict which Microsoft immediately appealed.

In 1996, before Netscape was even two years old, Clark already had set his sights set on a new enterprise. To help streamline what he saw as a bloated and highly inefficient healthcare industry, he launched Healtheon Corp. The firm's first product, an Internet-based system that automated enrollment in health plans for insurance companies and large employers, flopped. Clark found himself having to work hard to reassure his investors that Healtheon was still a lucrative idea. Recognizing that he needed someone with experience in marketing computer services, Clark also brought in a new CEO, Mike Long, in 1997. Long shifted Healtheon's focus to physician groups, believing that they would be more likely to embrace new technology than giant insurers.

According to Fortune columnist Julie Creswell, it was Microsoft that helped to finally spark Heal-theon's growth. "When Healtheon learned that Microsoft was on the verge of investing $100 million in an Atlanta online health startup called WebMD, Clark and Long foresaw a battle they wanted to avoid. Instead of fighting Microsoft, they made a deal valued at $6.5 billion to merge Healtheon and WebMD." The deal with WebMD proved to be lucrative. Consumers already were using the site to gather reputable medical information. While Healtheon could continue to devise ways to automate information processing procedures for healthcare providers, WebMD would be able to take advantage of the advertising potential a growing base of online visitors offered. Although his goal of revolutionizing the American healthcare system proved too broad, at least for the immediate future, Clark eventually was able to put together a leading heathcare Web site serving both physician groups and consumers.

Clark's involvement with Netscape essentially ended in November of 1998, when AOL agreed to pay roughly $4.2 billion for Netscape. When news of deal became public, stock prices skyrocketed. By the time AOL completed its acquisition in March of 1999, the value of the deal had reached $10 billion. Clark invested some of his windfall into yet another venture, myCFO Inc., an Internet-based financial management services firm catering to the wealthy. He continues to serve as chairman of Healtheon/WebMD and CEO and chairman of myCFO.