Academia After completing his doctorate, Clark worked at the
New York Institute of Technology's
Computer Graphics Lab. He was fired from that position due to insubordination. 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.
Silicon Graphics 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. In the mid-1980s, Silicon Graphics began to use the
MIPS CPU as the foundation of their newest workstations, replacing the
Motorola 68000. 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.
Netscape 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. The founding of Netscape and its
IPO in August 1995 launched the Internet boom on
Wall Street during the mid-to-late 1990s. 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.
Healtheon/WebMD 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.
Other affiliations In 1999, Clark launched
myCFO, a company formed to help wealthy Silicon Valley individuals manage their fortunes. 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. 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). In 2003, the company was acquired by Genaissance Pharmaceuticals Inc. 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. The website shut down in 2000, returning its remaining capital to investors. 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 mobile technology company
Ibotta. Ibotta became a publicly traded company in April 2024. In 2017, Clark announced the launch of CommandScape, a cyber secure building management and automation platform. In 2020, Clark announced the $30M A round of funding for Beyond Identity, with a product that is a phone-resident personal certificate-based authentication and authorization solution that eliminates all passwords. ==Awards==