James H. Clark

James Henry Clark (born March 23, 1944) is an American entrepreneur and computer scientist.

He founded several notable Silicon Valley technology companies, including Silicon Graphics, Netscape, myCFO, and Healtheon.

His research work in computer graphics led to the development of systems for the fast rendering of three-dimensional computer images.

Clark was born in Plainview, Texas, on March 23, 1944.

He dropped out of high school at 16 and spent four years in the US Navy, where he was introduced to electronics.

Clark began taking night courses at Tulane University's University College where, despite his lack of a high school diploma, he was able to earn enough credits to be admitted to the University of New Orleans.

There, Clark earned his bachelor's and a master's degrees in physics, followed by a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Utah in 1974.

After completing his doctorate, Clark worked at the New York Institute of Technology's Computer Graphics Lab.

He served as an assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz (1974-1978) before moving to Stanford University as an associate professor of electrical engineering (1979-1982).

Clark's research work concerned geometry pipelines, specialized software or hardware that accelerates the display of three dimensional images.

The peak of his group's advancements was the Geometry Engine, an early hardware accelerator for rendering computer images based on geometric models which he developed in 1979 with his students at Stanford.

In the mid-1980s, Silicon Graphics began to use the MIPS CPU as the foundation of their newest workstations, replacing the Motorola 68000.

In 1982, Clark along with several Stanford graduate students founded Silicon Graphics (SGI).

The earliest Silicon Graphics graphical workstations were mainly terminals, but they were soon followed by stand-alone graphical Unix workstations with very fast graphics rendering hardware.

By 1991, Silicon Graphics had become the world leader in the production of Hollywood movie visual effects and 3-D imaging.

Silicon Graphics focused on the high-end market where they could charge a premium for their special hardware and graphics software.

Clark had differences of opinion with Silicon Graphics management regarding the future direction of the company, and departed in late January 1994.

In February 1994, Clark sought out Marc Andreessen who had led the development of Mosaic, the first widely distributed and easy-to-use software for browsing the World Wide Web, while employed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).

Clark and Andreessen founded Netscape, and developed the Netscape Navigator web browser.

Clark's initial investment in Netscape was $4 million in 1994; he exited with $1.2 billion when Netscape was acquired by AOL in 1999.

The founding of Netscape and its IPO in August 1995 launched the Internet boom on Wall Street during the mid-to-late 1990s.

In 1995, Clark became interested in streamlining the paperwork associated with the health-care industry.

The resulting start-up, Healtheon, was founded in early 1996 with backing from Kleiner Perkins and New Enterprise Associates.

Although Clark's original idea of eliminating the paperwork and bureaucracy associated with medical care was ambitious, it did lead to successes in administrative streamlining of medical records technology.

However, an Atlanta, Georgia startup company, WebMD originally focused on medical content was also making similar in-roads.

Knowing WebMD had financial backing from Microsoft, Clark decided to merge Healtheon with the original WebMD to form the WebMD Corporation (NASDAQ: WBMD).

WebMD is a leader in health information on the Internet.

In 1998, Clark was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for the development of computer graphics and for technical leadership in the computer industry.

In 1999, Clark launched myCFO, a company formed to help wealthy Silicon Valley individuals manage their fortunes.

Clark was the subject of the 1999 bestseller The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story by U.S. author Michael Lewis.

Clark was a notable investor in Kibu.com, an Internet website for teens, which received approximately $22 million in funding.

Clark was chairman and financial backer of network-security startup Neoteris, founded in 2000, which was acquired by NetScreen in 2003 and subsequently by Juniper Networks.

Clark was a founding director and investor in the biotechnology company DNA Sciences, founded in 1998 to unravel the genetics of common disease using volunteers recruited from the Internet launched August 1, 2000 (see The New York Times).

The website shut down in 2000, returning its remaining capital to investors.

In late 2002, while Clark served on the board of directors, most of myCFO's operations were sold to Harris Bank and now operate as Harris myCFO.

In 2003, the company was acquired by Genaissance Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Clark coproduced the 2009 movie The Cove.

His funding made possible the purchase and covert installation of some high-tech camera and sound-recording equipment required to capture the film's climactic dolphin slaughter.

The film addresses the problem of whale and dolphin killing in Taiji, Wakayama, Japan.

Clark sits on the board and is one of the primary investors in the consumer facing mobile technology company Ibotta.