james h clark is a successful serial entrepreneur and computer scientist perhaps best known for co founding netscape with marc andreessen in 1994 netscape navigator was the market leader in web browsers in the early days of the internet becoming the dominant browser in terms of usage share in the 1990s 
netscape was eventually purchased by america online aol in 1998 making clark a billionaire 1 clark started netscape with a 4 1 million investment and exited the company with a 1 2 billion payout investopedia alison czinkotaearly life and educationjames h clark was born in plainview texas on march 23 1944 to blue collar working parents when clark was a small child his parents divorced and he and his siblings lived with their mother james rebelled as a youth misbehaving in school this led to many disciplinary actions including suspension ultimately he dropped out of high school and joined the navy 2 while there clark ran a side business making loans to other sailors he later returned to continue his formal education beginning with taking classes at tulane university s university college although he didn t have a high school degree he was eventually admitted to the university of new orleans where he earned his bachelor s and a master s degree in physics clark eventually earned a ph d in computer science from the university of utah clark went on to become an associate professor of electrical engineering at stanford university and a major benefactor of the james h clark center the location of the bioscience research program at stanford 3notable accomplishmentsin 1991 clark founded silicon graphics sgi a company that produced high quality visual effects for film and 3 d images for engineers silicon graphics counted george lucas lucasfilm and steven spielberg among its customers and had become a global leader in the production of hollywood movie visual effects and 3 d imaging in 1994 he left the company and sold his shares soon after leaving sgi james clark along with marc andreessen founded netscape a tech company that introduced the navigator graphical interface web browser one of the most popular web browsers of the 1990s navigator once commanded more than 70 of the market but met its demise when it tried to compete with microsoft s internet explorer 4 microsoft included internet explorer for free with its windows operating system making it the browser of choice because it was not free to use navigator ultimately lost market share the end of netscape navigator was central to microsoft s antitrust trial the result of which was a ruling that stated that microsoft s bundling of internet explorer ie with the windows operating system was a monopolistic business practice in 1998 aol purchased netscape for 4 2 billion inaugurating clark into the billionaire s club 5clark also founded healtheon which later merged with webmd and he was the original investor and chair of the digital photo sharing website shutterfly founded in 1999 6wealth and philanthropywhile jim clark is best known as the co founder of netscape he has since multiplied his wealth through timely tech investments in companies such as meta apple x formerly twitter and palantir his latest startup is a venture called commandscape an app that controls everything from a building s alarms and cameras to its lighting and thermostat as of 2023 forbes estimates that clark s net worth is more than 3 billion making him one of the wealthiest men in america 7an ocean lover his yachts include the 300 foot sailing yacht athena and the 100 foot racing sailboat comanche he is also a well known philanthropist contributing mainly to institutions of higher education such as stanford university and tulane university personal lifeclark has been married four times the divorce from his third wife of 15 years nancy rutter a forbes journalist is reported to have cost him 125 million in cash and assets in the settlement 8 he married kristy hinze a former swimsuit model in 2009 clark has two daughters with kristy hinze dylan vivienne and harper hazelle 