James H. Clark

So how was that transition? How did you manage that?

Well, I had had some experience because Jim Clark brought me into his company when he spun out Silicon Graphics, since I had done some work on the geometry engine, built a key part of the software that helped build that chip.

So I had been a consultant for them for a while.

I understood something about the Valley.

Some of them probably wouldn't survive the HR filter these days, but they were pretty funny.

Yeah, someone was telling me a story I'd never heard where the story goes he was negotiating with Jim Clark on his compensation, his position, and Jim wasn't thrilled with what Jim was saying.

Jim Clark wasn't thrilled with what Jim Arksdale was asking for.

And Clark asked, where does that number come from? And Jim just said, that's the cost of eggs.

Well, that was

Meanwhile, Stanford thrives by using its research and campus to mint the next set of tech billionaires who in turn fund the next generation of the university.

In the 2000s, James Clark, a former professor and the founder of Silicon Graphics and Netscape, pledged $150 million to build a facility for engineers, computer scientists, and medical researchers Just two years after opening, Karl Deisseroth, who was working inside the new Clark Center, uncovered the ability to switch brain circuits on and off with light.

His discovery of optogenetics has become the defining tool of modern neuroscience, used today in thousands of labs worldwide to map how the brain works.

While MIT poached his collaborators, Stanford kept Karl, who would remain for the next two decades.

So as all of you know, we're

here tonight to honor Jim Clark, who is a computer scientist, an entrepreneur, and a philanthropist.

We're also truly privileged tonight to have with us Stanford's president, John Hennessy, who will engage, I think in a few minutes, in an interesting conversation with Jim.

Now it turns out that these two go back a lot of years.

And this is a replica, Jim, of the plaque that's out there with your picture and name on it.

If you walk outside after the session this evening, you'll see pictures of the other engineering heroes that are out there.

So, without further ado, let me turn the podium over to my boss, John Hennessy, who will, I'm sure, engage in an interesting conversation with Jim Clark.

But first, please join me in welcoming both of them.

What do you remember, obviously, going from a 32-bit fastest CPU to this graphics pipeline? I mean, actually, the

interesting story is that Jim Clark, who was the CEO of Silicon Graphics and the co-founder, Stanford professor, he was essentially forced out of the company because he wanted to build GPUs.

He wanted to build GPU cards that you plug into PCs.

And the board didn't want to do that.

This internet thing is the future.

We're not doing that at General Magic, so I'm kind of done.

i went home and i had no idea what was going to be next so it was a young person that was pretty scary thing to do for for me but i was completely convinced that the web was going to be the future and then meanwhile jim clark had been starting what we what was called mosaic at the time which was going to become mcom and then eventually netscape and um what he did was really interesting he he flew his private jet around the world picking up the 10 young kids who knew anything about this newfangled World Wide Web thing, right? And so this would be like, you know, Lou Montulli, who had built the first text browser.

It would be Rob McCool, who built the very first web server, right? Folks like that.

It'll just be because that internet thing didn't work out." Well, the good news is the internet thing worked out.

[laughs] Um, I worked with Netscape when it was still a private company, so my second, uh, interaction with, uh, with Jim Clark.

Um, the, uh, Craig Newmark, uh, who some of you probably know of, he'd should be, would be a great teacher for you to have here, by the way.

He's, he's an incredible guy.

Soon, Andreessen was off to California for an $80,000 tech job.

Then, with Silicon Graphics Inc. founder Jim Clark, he co-founded Mosaic Communications, as if they were authorized to build the commercial edition of the university's Mosaic program.

He and Clark ransacked NCSA talent to release the Mosaic Netscape browser.

After a legal dispute with Andreessen's alma mater, the startup dropped the Mosaic branding.

Classic.

Uh, and she is married to James H. Clark of Netscape and WebMD.

W- now Netscape I know nothing about-

[laughs]

Um, but, like-

Whoever she might have been

Whoever the fuck she is, but James H. Clark, um, you know, he could be worse.

He could be the founder of OpenAI.