BOOKS
In his just-published book, The New New Thing (W. W. Norton & Co.), author Michael Lewis takes readers inside the now-familiar world of Silicon Valley excess, the frantic dealmaking, the absurdly hyped expectations, the phenomenal wealth. But the 39-year-old best-selling author of Liar's Poker and The Money Culture brings something genuinely exotic to the mix: near-total access to one of the Valley's biggest and most enigmatic players. For more than a year, Lewis shadowed Jim Clark, the serial entrepreneur who, having already launched two multibillion-dollar companies (Silicon Graphics and Netscape), was packaging number three (Healtheon) while questing feverishly for the next new market. Lewis talks about what makes Clark - and the Valley - click.
Wired: What's the quickest way to tell that the balance of power shifted from Wall Street to Silicon Valley?
Lewis: All you have to do is walk into Kleiner Perkins and ask to see the stack of résumés from partners at Wall Street firms who want to be venture capitalists. They have been shoved a couple of rungs down the food chain. This really screws up investment bankers' heads. There's no point being an investment banker if you don't make the most money. It creates this very weird kind of cringing quality in them.
Why did you choose Jim Clark as your main character?
Some people are like wolves in a wildlife experiment - you track them and where they go tells you so much about the environment. What's peculiar about Jim Clark's character is what's peculiar about the Valley - the ability to plow under old things without the slightest trace of nostalgia. Clark attaches almost zero value to the past and has an unusual ability to forget it. Historically, that's a very weird attitude. Sort of hyper-American. He's just a wonderful character.
What drives a multibillionaire like Clark to launch new ventures?
His animal instinct. It's not the cold, rational process that an outsider might think guides the Valley forward. You watch this man, this learning machine, continually groping for the new new thing as he claws his way to the top of the food chain. For Clark, it's a kind of search that has spiritual dimensions. It's what keeps him alive. His pride is on the line. He's the only guy in America to create three multibillion-dollar companies. Now he wants to be the guy who's done four.
Do you think he gets any satisfaction from success?
Clark's financial ambition is an extreme version of something that happens to a lot of people in the Valley. He leaves Stanford, a professor with no money, and he has this number in his head - $10,000,000. And then he gets that. Then a few years later he's got a new number in his head - $100,000,000. Then he makes a billion dollars and that's not enough. In the back of his mind, what he's really thinking is that he wants to have more money than anybody else in the world.
More than Gates?
He knows it's ridiculous, but that's exactly who's sitting in the back of his brain, taunting him: "You can't catch me!" Given that one of the two of them has to have a hundred billion dollars, Clark thinks it should be him.
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Power Exchange
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Stupid Net Laws
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