Jim Clark: The Comeback Billionaire Who Bet On Apple

One of my favourite tech entrepreneurs.

If any of you haven't read Michael Lewis's "The New New Thing" ( http://www.amazon.com/New-Thing-Silicon-Valley-Story/dp/0393... ) its a great book about Jim Clark and the dotcom boom.

I respect that:

The 67-year-old father of a newborn baby girl is taking things a bit easier these days, spending his time on his yacht, Athena, writing code and programming all things Apple.

He mentions that his investment in Twitter is a lot riskier than Facebook, because they haven't found a way to monetize. I'd say that the biggest risk to Twitter's business isn't monetization, but replacement (dying like MySpace). Both risks seem slim right now.

Twitter has stated their business model is advertising. If I'm recalling correctly, the sourced estimates are that they're at a $200+ million run rate on sales. If they get to $500 million in the next few years, that's a great base, even if it's not on Facebook's level.

I sometimes got to sit next to Jim Clark during lunch when I worked at Silicon Graphics. He's just walk into the cafeteria and sit anywhere and sometimes it was with us systems engineers. Interesting to listen to the chit-chat.