By LESLIE KAUFMAN
IN the fall of 1995, two years
after graduating from Stanford
University, Diane Barrum received
a call from her sophomore
roommate, Srinija Srinivasan,
asking her to join a company
recently founded by two other
young Stanford alumni, Jerry Yang and
David Filo. The deal was this:
In exchange for 18-hour days,
grinding away in overcrowded
conditions, Ms. Barrum would get in early
on a hot phenomenon called
the Internet. But Ms. Barrum,
happily employed by a biotechnology
company based in Seattle, said, ''I just
was not ready to take the risk.''
Ms. Barrum, as it happens, turned
down the chance to be
employee No. 30 at Yahoo, the
wildly successful Internet portal, or gateway,
which has a current market
value of about $82 billion. Now
she is back in Palo Alto and,
after a hiatus of traveling and joblessness,
has recently joined an Internet
start-up, too. ''Of course, I
wish I'd taken it,'' she said
of the Yahoo job. ''One can only imagine what
I'd be worth.''
Such tales of quick riches and
missed opportunities can be
heard in many places these
days, among people of all ages. But probably
nowhere else was the swift,
unexpected divergence of fortunes
thrown into such stark relief
as among Ms. Barrum and her peers in the
Stanford undergraduate class
of 1993, who burst on the scene
just as the World Wide Web
was coming into its own.
Of course, only a small percentage
of recent college
graduates have become Internet
millionaires. But there are enough from elite
universities, like Harvard,
M.I.T. and Stanford, that they
are influential far beyond
their numbers. A look at a sampling from this one
Stanford class -- among
the earliest to have so many success
stories -- makes this phenomenon
clear.
The university says it does
not track the wealth of its
alumni, but school officials
acknowledge that many in the class of '93 have
become wealthy unusually early.
It includes five of the six
founders of the Internet portal
Excite (now Excite@Home); three founders of
the online retailer of sporting
goods, FogDog; one of the
first employees of Yahoo; a
pioneer of Trilogy Software; and a top executive
with LinkShare. Many of these
20-somethings are now worth
tens of millions of dollars,
if not more. When the class gathered in 1998,
it donated $163,000, then the
largest class gift for a
five-year reunion -- only to
be surpassed last year by the Internet-rich
class of '94.
In part, these technology Wunderkinder
strike a chord with
their peers because they have
achieved the dual aspirations that have
defined Generation X: being
passionate about work and free from
authority. But their existence
has also raised the whole generation's
visions of early wealth and,
for some, served as a nagging reminder of
what might have been.
''This generation has made its
money so young that it is
almost unnatural,'' said Alan
Wolfe, a sociologist who heads the Center for
Religion and American Public
Life at Boston College.
''Whether you are repelled
by these young millionaires or attracted by
them, they cannot be ignored.
In that sense they are icons for their
peers.''
Stanford, in the heart of Silicon
Valley, has turned out a
disproportionately large number
of Web superstars. With top-rated programs
in science and engineering
-- and almost 9 out of 10
undergraduates taking at least
one computer course -- the palm-lined,
mission-style campus here has
been ground zero for the high-technology boom.
The members of the class of
'93, like Ms. Srinivasan and Ms.
Barrum, have seen their fates
spun wildly apart by the Internet -- not so
much because of any particular
differences in cleverness or
ambition, but because some
of them happened to be very well placed as the
transformation began.
Jim Hennessey, the school's
provost and former dean of the
engineering school, noted that
1993 was ''right on the cusp of the Internet
explosion.'' Like others on
the Stanford faculty, he is
acutely aware that the success
of the Internet has ushered in a new era of
student life.
On its statistical face the
Stanford class of 1993 was almost
indistinguishable from its
predecessors. It was split roughly 50-50
between men and women; about
7 percent of the class were
African-American; 17 percent
were Asian-American. Students' majors were
not particularly skewed toward
technology. Of the 1,730
degrees conferred, 6.6 percent
were in engineering, 10 percent were in
economics and 16.7 percent
in biology or human biology.
But the more forward-looking
graduates were ideally
positioned for the Internet
economy. Not only had they been exposed to many
new technologies -- e-mail
was nearly universal among Stanford
undergraduates by 1992, as
were experimental high-speed
telecommunications lines --
but they also were entering the
working world well before the
Internet sector was swamped with start-ups.
Rich alumni are nothing new
for the university that graduated
William Hewlett and David Packard
(class of '34), the founders of one of
Silicon Valley's first high-technology
businesses. But not so
long ago, Stanford graduates
expected success to take time.
Herrant Katchadourian, a sociologist,
is tracking an earlier
Stanford class, from 1981.
In his book, ''The Cream of the Crop,''
graduates at their 10-year
reunion reported widespread
contentment with their salaries,
which averaged $54,000, roughly $18,000
above the average then for
college graduates. Many said
proudly they expected to earn
as much as $1 million a year -- 10 to 15 years
down the road. Perhaps when
he revisits them next year at
their 20-year anniversary for
a new book, he will not find them so
sanguine.
But the Internet has given the
class of '93 and its
successors a far different
timetable -- and even greater ambitions.
Consider Krista Rollins, 27,
a 1993 graduate who is now vice president for
communications at Trilogy Software,
based in Austin, Tex. She once
thought that her biggest career
concerns would be salary,
title and the number of people
she managed, but her idea of success has
changed. ''It used to be much
more about the long term,'' she
said. ''Now it is about how
to become very successful in the next three
or four years.'' By her mid-30's,
or 40 at the latest, Ms.
Rollins hopes to be ''very
financially independent'' -- that is, rich
enough to quit.
The Stanford faculty has noted
the changing culture with
mixed emotions. James Montoya,
vice provost for student affairs, has sensed
the acceleration in the student
life cycle since the early
90's, as undergraduates have
moved to ''Internet time.''
''It used to be 'I'll get out
of school and travel and see
the world before I settle down,'
'' he said. ''But what I hear now is 'This
is the time to join a start-up,
before I get old and have
responsibilities, like a family.'
''
Needless to say, not every member
of the class of '93 shares
this computer-industry intensity
about striking it rich. According to a
class survey for the five-year
reunion, some 12 percent called high
technology (separate from engineering)
their field of endeavor -- a big
proportion, compared with most
universities. But plenty of
other graduates were still
in medical training or had begun other careers,
while some were taking time
off to raise children. Still, the
existence of such sharply divergent
paths has made young graduates feel like
players in some sort of modern
lottery.
The Programmer: A Physics Major Makes Good
Graham F. Spencer came to Stanford
in 1989 with the intention
of becoming a physics major,
but he was drawn more to computers.
After finishing school, he
formed a company with five college
friends to build a software
navigator for the newly emerging Web. Mr.
Spencer, whose major was computer
science, is now
acknowledged as the programming
genius behind the portal known as Excite.
In the lean first years, he
worked 80-hour weeks, getting by
on beans and rice. But before
the company's initial public offering in 1997,
Mr. Spencer netted 600,000
shares of Excite stock; his stake
would be worth $64 million
at the time that the company merged with At
Home in January 1999.
''Do I deserve the money I have?
I struggle with that a
lot,'' the soft-spoken Mr.
Spencer said. ''On some level, I'd like to
believe I have certain skills
that have made me successful. But how can
being a little more competent
at computer science make you so much
richer?''
He describes himself as ''anti-ostentatious,''
saying he does
not go in for ''three cars
a year and Champagne.'' He and his fiancee own
a cozy new home in Palo Alto.
In this money-flooded valley,
of course, plain-vanilla dwellings
can run $1 million, but this is no
gizmo-filled palace; it is
cramped enough that the dining
table occupies part of the
living room.
His great indulgence has been
travel -- weekend trips to Vail
to snowboard, or to Hawaii
to surf. Recently, he and his fiancee took a
two-week trip to Italy, often
staying in $500-a-night rooms
on the Amalfi coast. He also
works at home whenever he feels like it,
padding around the house in
his stocking feet and keeping his
Siamese cat company.
Despite his low-key lifestyle,
Mr. Spencer acknowledges that
money has altered his relationships
with peers. He met his fiancee at
Excite and said it made a difference
to both of them that she
had her own substantial stock
holdings and had ''earned'' her right to
partake of the lush life.
By contrast, after his hometown
newspaper in Columbia, S.C.,
splashed his net worth across
the front page last year, high school
friends, he said, started treating
him ''like some sort of
billionaire, which I am definitely
not.''
Mr. Spencer plans to retire
by the age of 40; in the
meantime, he wants to get a
better sense of how to live without organizing
all his time around work. ''I
hope I get more comfortable with spending
money,'' he said wistfully.
''The problem is that the only people I know
well who have this kind of
money are like me -- they just got
it. None of us knows what we
want to do with it yet.''
It is almost as if Mr. Spencer
is waiting around for
legitimacy. He has sold less
than 5 percent of his stock and still puts in
long hours at Excite as a kind
of superprogrammer. While he says he is
''basically a volunteer'' --
meaning that he does not have to work if he
does not want to -- he says
he feels inextricably tied to the
long-term success of the company.
''I deliberately try not to keep score on
my own net worth, because that
is gross at some level,'' he said.
''I want to feel that we've
built something sustainable, something great.''
The E-Retailer: Lots of Money But No Dates
At 27, Robert Chea, founder
of FogDog, does not look a day
over 19 but has the poise of
a 50-year-old chief executive. As the son of
Cambodian immigrants who struggled
to put him through school,
Mr. Chea felt he had to be
rich. ''I'd be disappointed in myself,'' he
said, ''if I did not make a
lot of money.'' But even as a
sophomore in college, Mr. Chea
wanted more than a fat bank account. He
wanted autonomy.
Then, he remembers, his concept
of success came from an AT&T
commercial. The advertisement,
which aimed to showcase the
liberating power of the
company's digital technologies,
showed futuristic scenes of
people receiving faxes in huts on tropical
islands. ''That was my measure
of success,'' he said, ''to be at a
level where I had enough free
time to sit on the beach, but was still
connected to the rest of the
world.''
The path to controlling his
destiny almost eluded him. He
arrived at Stanford in 1989,
interested in philosophy and archaeology. But
his mother nudged him toward
electrical engineering. Upon
graduating, he applied to law
school, thinking that he would pursue a career
as a patent lawyer. But through
a classmate's father, Mr.
Chea got caught up in showing
sporting-goods makers how to use the Internet
and eventually formed the company
that would become FogDog.
Mr. Chea, by his own accounting,
has worked terrifically long
hours seven days a week for
five years. But the results are clear. Last
fall, FogDog moved its headquarters
from a nondescript,
cramped office park outside
San Jose, Calif., to a glorious, light-filled
loft near Redwood City, complete
with stainless-steel fixtures and
blond wood desks. It is the
sort of office that Heather Locklear, the
''Melrose Place'' diva, would
inhabit if she ever signed up
to do a sitcom about being
chief executive of an Internet start-up. Mr. Chea
owns 1.15 million shares of
FogDog, which went public in
December. The shares are now
worth $10.25 apiece, making his stake
worth $11.8 million.
There have been personal costs.
In his five-year class
reunion book, for example,
Mr. Chea said only half-jokingly that he had not
had a date in five years. ''It's
by choice dammit,'' he wrote. At a
recent birthday party, his
friend Andy Chen, FogDog's co-founder, felt so
bad for Mr. Chea that he invited
all 70 employees to write
down names of date possibilities
in the form of a classified ad, letting Mr.
Chea choose three.
Mr. Chea no longer has any desire
to live on a tropical
island and talk to his officemates
-- essentially his whole social universe
-- by phone. And he has less
desire to absent himself from the
technology culture that so
enthralls him. ''I can't imagine what it would be
like,'' he said, ''to
be a lawyer and hear about the Internet
all the time and not get to
participate in it.''
The Nonconformist: Looking Beyond The Internet Life
While the potential of the Internet
economy has dazzled many
graduates, it has left a distinct
minority of the 1993 class feeling
nonplused -- and left out.
In another time, San Francisco
might have seemed like a slice
of paradise to Elaine Romanelli,
a music major who prides herself on
spontaneity and artistic aspirations.
But the Bay Area landscape has
changed greatly since the
1970's, when Stanford was a
center of radical student protest and San
Francisco a mecca of counterculture.
Ms. Romanelli misses being part
of a generation that followed
its heart, regardless of money.
She has tried hard to hold on and recreate
a bit of that spirit. Her work
life since college has
included being a co-founder
of a business that provided ''haikus on
demand'' (two for a dollar)
and quitting a respectable job in marketing to
try her hand at professional
singing. She lives in a dilapidated Victorian
house in the grittier South
End of San Francisco and frequents a
local cafe that is a sympathetic
home to creative types.
Still, as a Stanford graduate
living in San Francisco, she
has not been able to avoid
the Web rat race. ''The Internet is a pervasive
presence here,'' she said.
''Many, many jobs are Web-based,
and e-commerce just sort of
permeates everything.''
Ms. Romanelli is a petite woman
with delicate features, and
her eyes flash when she is
asked about the Stanford stars of the moment.
She is far from worshipful.
''The thing that gets to me,''
she said, ''is that the people
getting wealthy are young, single boys.'' In
previous generations, she said,
real wealth could take
decades to accumulate, but
her peers ''don't have coping tools'' for the
vast sums they are now able
to spend.
''They are getting rich and
spending their money on
'supersoakers' '' -- as exceedingly
expensive toys like Jaguars and
automated houses are known
in the parlance of Silicon Valley. ''They
don't have a sense of philanthropy
or giving back to the community -- or any
community outside of work.''
The expansion of the Web leaves
Ms. Romanelli cold, even a
little indignant. ''A society
of people who write to each other solely by
computer is not my idea of
utopia,'' she said. She has
watched friends and classmates
devote themselves to Internet start-ups, and
she believes their lives are
too narrow.
''There is an insane amount
of money, but also an insane
amount of work. It is like
slave labor.'' The computer, she said, ''was
supposed to facilitate life;
out here, it has worked the
other way around.''
The Web Editor: Feeling Fulfilled In Love of Work
Despite the financial gulf that
separates Ms. Srinivasan, who
joined Yahoo, and Ms. Barrum,
who did not, they remain comfortable
friends. There is no animosity
or visible jealousy, just a
tacit acceptance of changed
circumstances. For a dinner of take-out Indian,
Ms. Srinivasan pays and Ms.
Barrum picks it up.
It helps that, like many other
young Stanford millionaires,
Ms. Srinivasan, who had an
interdisciplinary major called symbolic
systems, eschews aggressive
displays of wealth. She lives in
a loft-style duplex in one
of the least fancy areas of Palo Alto, among
graduate students and Internet
worker bees. She dresses in
print skirts with matching
pastel T-shirts, a low-cost uniform of working
women everywhere.
When she and Ms. Barrum, who
majored in human biology, spread
out on the tan sofas in her
living room to chat, they talk about
family (both are close to their
parents), about friends from
college and about eventually
juggling careers with children (both are
single).
When it comes to money, both
acknowledge they are more than a
little stunned at the turns
of fate. ''Don't get me wrong -- Srinija has
worked very hard and I always
knew she would be successful at
something,'' Ms. Barrum said.
''But I never thought she'd be a big
deal at a company at age 28,
and she did not either.''
Ms. Srinivasan, who as the fifth
employee at Yahoo is
probably worth tens of millions
(she will not say), concedes that her sudden
wealth has taken her by surprise.
''I've worked hard and I don't
think I am dumb and I am
deeply passionate about my
work,'' she said. ''But in no way has my effort
been proportionately rewarded.
Emotionally, that is something
you have to come to terms with.''
She considers herself successful,
not because of what she is
worth, she said, but because
she loves what she does. As vice president
and editor in chief of Yahoo,
she leads a team that sorts the
ever-expanding constellation
of Web sites into categories that will make
sense to subscribers. When
tough calls arise at work -- like
whether messianic Jews should
be listed under Judaism or Christianity --
she has stomachaches that keep
her awake at night.
''I honestly spend my days
in ways that I feel are engaging,
compelling and fulfilling and
rewarding,'' she said.
Ms. Barrum nods at her friend's
words. ''When I was living
away from Palo Alto, I felt
there was all this excitement going on here and
all these young people having
a real effect on so many
companies,'' she said. ''I
felt I was missing out. I came back not for the
money, but for the excitement.''
Still, she adds that living
life in the Internet center, it
is difficult to be 28 and not
yet a success without occasionally feeling
uneasy. ''You can't deny that
knowing people who have gotten wealthy
changes your perspective on
some things,'' Ms. Barrum said. ''I feel
like I am falling behind in
the race to buy a house, a race
to achieve monetary goals.''
Will she have another shot at
Internet riches? ''Yahoo is not
going to slip into the ocean,''
she said, ''but it is not going to make a
lot of millionaires anymore.''
Copyright 2000. The New York
Times Company.
May not be reproduced or transmitted
withoutpermission.