E-Envy
LAST WEEK, OUR FRONT PAGE FEATURED ONE OF THE NEWEST MEMBERS OF the OC billionaires’ club, Quest Software’s Vince Smith. On the same front page, we ran a story on an ambitious new technology incubator company being planned with the backing of Scott Blum, who is expected to join the billionaires’ club as soon as his Buy.com rolls out.
While the ink on those stories was still drying, the charter members of this local rich kids’ club, Henry Nicholas and Henry Samueli, added another half billion or so to their respective net worths, now approaching $6 billion each. Broadcom stock soared above 330 at one point, and the company mercifully announced a stock split.
While OC’s club is impressively populated, it is not unique. In tech havens around the country, whiz kids have become instant Midases, the stock of their ventures bid up to mind-boggling levels.
And so I found myself at the Opera Club in the Performing Arts Center last week, chatting with a local mover and shaker, who marveled at the rise of the dot-com sun gods. He contrasted their seeming overnight success to that of a fellow like center benefactor Henry Segerstrom, the South Coast Plaza magnate who built his fortune painstakingly over years and decades. “Henry still goes to work every day, he calls on his tenants, he’s in there plugging away, and compared to these guys, he looks like a piker,” the man marveled. “I wonder how that makes him feel?”
I peered for a moment into my martini before answering.
“Well,” I said, “I imagine he feels just like the rest of us.”
