Computer virus guru John McAfee is apparently on the run in Belize, wanted for the murder of a neighbor. He allegedly squandered upward of $100 million, his payout from the selling of his company, McAfee Associates, which went public in a pre-crash IPO. Before this recent debacle, I saw him profiled in some magazine and living the good life in a custom house in a forest. Then, I saw a picture of him living the good life in New Mexico. Somehow, he ended up in Belize.
I chatted with McAfee a lot in the early days when he was promoting a newsletter about the evils of the computer virus. This was during the time when Peter Norton said that computer viruses were hogwash. Back then, they were, but they would not remain so if McAfee had his way.
He was a natural self-promoter. He actually promoted the whole idea of a computer virus as a great plague about to ruin everything. To this day, I'm convinced that he created the market for the modern computer virus as a marketing ploy to sell anti-virus code. It is quite an achievement.
One night, I had dinner with him at the now-closed Stars restaurant in San Francisco, where he really turned on the sales pitch for himself, his company, and the plague that was the computer virus. He was such a good salesman that I ended up picking up the tab with promises that he'd pick up the next one. I never saw him after that.
Now if you believe the reports, McAfee has slowly evolved into a Joseph Conrad character. He is paranoid, drug addled, gun-toting, allegedly murderous, and an enemy of the state. All the elements are there for a decent movie, on par with Scarface.
Summary: A rich and intelligent businessman gets involved with drugs, sex, and crazy ideas about the jungle and ecology. He goes nuts!
To me, this is yet another example of people who wander from the tech sector off into areas of which they have no real knowledge. More than a few computer nerds made a ton of money in the business and then went into areas such as jet leasing. This is fine if your partner wrote the book on the business. But generally, all you did was read the book written and now you think it is a manageable business, despite having zero experience in the industry.
Personally, I cannot see how someone who made millions of dollars by writing some valuable software suddenly quits that game and starts a wildcat oil drilling company. It just makes no sense.
So McAfee is one of the many people I've run into who seemed so happy to get out of the business that made him $100 million. Did it really suck that much or was he lured by the various self-help philosophies that extol the virtues of changing your career every eight years so you can become a more rounded person? I'm not sure, but I think he made some bad choices. And I'm still waiting for that dinner he owes me.
You can Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter @therealdvorak.
More John C. Dvorak:
•  John McAfee Owes Me Dinner
•  Touch-Screen Desktops: A Hazard to Your Health
•  Don't Credit iMessage for the Texting "Decline"
•  Is Microsoft Planting Windows 8 Comments?
•  A Rainy Few Days for the Cloud
• more
Login or Register blog comments powered by Disqus
No comments:
Post a Comment