FORTUNE'S 4* I UN*gR I S*

and move in fewer than six months. "The $12,000 a month isn'tgoing to hurt if we're successful," says Tim Hickman, an Inter-net millionaire (he was a marketer at Netscape) whose new com-pany, iTixs, plans to stay in its offices only five months. (Formore on iTixs, see First.)

It sure beats working out of the garuge. The typical SOMA of-fice is a big open space, with computers lined up on makeshift

desks, papers strewn about, large expanses of white wall, woodbeams (if the company's lucky), and often a skylight or two. Thepeople who work in the outfits are invariably young and well dressedand usually white. They're funky and hip, not geeky and retiring.Walking down the street, Hickman and I bump into an iTixs prod-uct manager coming in for his first day of work. He's dressed like askater dude. The tips of his spiky hair are bleached almost white.

DAIRE,6,_ nceyou'vebeeninthe

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@e= f f iA E start to change. In're@:-E 1992. when Jonathan

-:s7_ -: Bates first drove outWest from Minneapolis-borrowing$65 from his dad for gas-he wasshocked at the cost ofliving here. Butthen he got his firstjob, as a graphic de-signer, and it paid the princely sum of$25 an hour. "I realized," he says,"that the streets were indeed pavedwith gold."

Seven years later, as a multimediaproducer at Excite@Home, Bates hasdiscovered that the more you get, themore you think you need. "When yougo through a company like this and seeevery motorcycle is a Ducati and seethe rows of BMWs, and everyone hasthe Rolex, you realize people don'tthink one million, five million, or eventen million dollars is a lot of money," hesays. "The scale is different."

To Bates, it feels as if all those who gotinto the Internet industry a few yearsago have had their million dollars. His,however, slipped away as effortlesslyas it arrived, when Excite@Home'sstock took a plunge this summer. "NowI'm a several-hundred-thousandaire."he says, a bit ruefully.

"To say I want more may not be com-pletely accurate," he says. But it's a strug-gle to find the right way to talk about it atall if you don't want to sound greedy."The way I view success in the Valley isaccess to opportunity," he says. "Beingable to work at a cutting-edge com-pany-just being in the club." Wealth isa natural byproduct of success.

He knows that he and his wife couldgo back to Minnesota wi th whatthey've made and live like kings andqueens, in a monstrous house, with abutler. But this is where the club is.

"I don't care about the money aslong as I'm able to go to an AIM andtake out $100." he savs. "I never want

to worry about Am I going to be ableto have lunch? or Can I buy this pair ofshoes?"

"The crash was really good for me,"he insists. "It made me really appre-ciate what I'd spent this far, and thatthis could all disappear."

- Jodi Mardesich

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108 . F ORT U N E September 27, 1999