Gore Finds Brain Trust in Silicon Valley Group

By ELIZABETH SHOGREN

Aug. 25, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON —

It doesn’t show up on the roster of White House advisory panels and blue-ribbon commissions. It doesn’t even have an official name, although those in the know have nicknamed it “Gore-Tech.”

Once a month, Vice President Al Gore meets privately with a select group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, sometimes on the high-tech executives’ home turf in Northern California, sometimes around a conference table at the White House.

“They’re like the kind of meetings I’m used to in the Valley,” says Kim Polese, a Palo Alto software entrepreneur who is a regular participant. “There’s no hierarchy, and no protocol about who can speak when. That would get in the way.”

Although the topics vary from month to month, the overarching agenda is the same: fathoming the implications of America’s “new economy” and devising practical solutions to public policy problems large and small.

And while its existence remains something of a secret in official Washington, Gore-Tech is rapidly becoming one of the most influential brain trusts in town.

In recent months, Gore-Tech has weighed in on issues ranging from education policy to FDA staffing. And increasingly, White House officials all the way up to President Clinton are seeking its guidance--and responding to its advice.

“We’re so conceited that we think what’s in the best interest of our industry is in the best interest of the whole country,” says Halsey Minor, 32-year-old founder of a fast-growing technology company called CNET and another Gore-Tech regular.

“We feel in some ways like we’re reviving America,” adds Steve Perlman, another participant and inventor of WebTV, a device that enables people to surf the Internet and send E-mail with their television sets.

To some extent, the hubris is understandable. Over the last three years, the high-tech sector has contributed 27% of the growth in the nation’s gross domestic product, according to a recent analysis by Business Week magazine.

Even the Clinton administration’s political opponents acknowledge the significance of the new Washington-Silicon Valley alliance.

“The White House and vice president’s office have been absolutely masterful in the way they’ve worked this community,” groans Dan Schneer, a former press spokesman for Gov. Pete Wilson.

Schneer, who is trying to woo Silicon Valley executives into the Republican camp, says his task is a difficult one. “I can talk to CEOs about how they shouldn’t support Clinton because he opposes capital gains tax cuts,” he says. “But if they just had beer and pizza with Al Gore the night before, I’m only going to get so far.”

Although there have been only eight Gore-Tech skull sessions so far, the collaboration already has had a measurable impact on public policy. Some examples:

* An administration-endorsed project to improve communication between school and home through an interactive computer network.

* A Clinton-sanctioned effort to make it easier for parents to monitor their children’s Internet use.

* An administration campaign to enact legislation to prevent unnecessary delays in approval of new pharmaceuticals.

Gore-Tech consists of a core group of 15 or so regulars, although the roster varies somewhat from month to month. It includes the young, wildly successful designers of new technologies that are rapidly becoming household names: Netscape, Yahoo, WebTV, Java.

“Our goal was to wire up this community with the White House,” says White House technology advisor Tim Newell. “We feel it’s been successful.”

The unusual collaboration represents a striking turnabout for the technology industry, which has long practiced a leave-us-alone-and-we’ll-leave-you-alone strategy in its dealings with government.

The group has informed Gore’s understanding of what kind of economy will work for America in the next century, a vision he espouses regularly in speeches across the country and is likely to incorporate into his presidential campaign for 2000, aides say.

Explaining the impact the group has had on his thinking, Gore, a technology buff who likes to surf the World Wide Web himself, uses an Internet analogy.

“Sometimes, when you’re downloading a picture, it will come up in sort of sketchy form, and it will add another layer and another layer, and then it gets dense and bright and you can see it clearly,” an animated Gore said in a recent interview.

“The growth in my understanding of the new economy is similar to that process. At first it’s sketchy, and then there are more details filled in . . . after a while, I’m better able to paint a bright and vivid picture.”

Halsey Minor, the CNET founder, jokes that Gore’s metaphor suggests that someone should buy the vice president a faster modem. But he agrees with Gore’s assessment.

“He gets our industry, and we’re slowly filling in the picture for him,” Minor said in an interview in his sprawling complex near San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf. CNET currently operates four television programs and 10 popular Web sites.

Clearly, both Gore and his Silicon Valley buddies foresee potential benefits from their alliance.

For Gore, the insight gleaned from the brainstorming sessions could help him outpace the competition in 2000. The Gore-Tech participants, as representatives of the fastest-growing sector of the American economy, would be valuable additions to his campaign support team.

For the entrepreneurs, the more government listens to them, the less likely they are to be surprised by new regulations or legislation that could cripple their companies at home or dull their competitive edge abroad.

John Doerr, the hyperkinetic venture capitalist who is the guru of the group, dates the political awakening to last year’s fight to defeat California’s Proposition 211. The ballot initiative would have made it easier for shareholders to bring lawsuits against companies and hold their directors financially responsible for corporate blunders. High-tech companies, because of the volatility of their stock, fear they are particularly vulnerable to such suits. Doerr personally spearheaded a $40-million campaign that helped defeat the initiative last November.

“What we learned from this 211 fight is that if we’re not in an ongoing conversation with the elected officials, we’ll get what we deserve, which is to be totally blindsided,” says Doerr, 46.

In Silicon Valley, there is general agreement on why technology executives have shed their traditional reluctance to engage in politics.

The industry has changed dramatically in recent years, particularly with development of the Internet’s World Wide Web. Instead of simply churning out microchips and writing utilitarian software, technology firms increasingly are designing products to help average folks use the Internet for everything from knowledge-gathering to bill-paying.

The executives have changed too. Instead of the middle-aged, calculator-toting engineers of the past, the new Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are younger, more media-savvy and market-oriented.

As the industry changes, it becomes more vulnerable to government intervention and regulation.

A key example was the Communications Decency Act passed by Congress last year and signed into law by Clinton. The measure, which was struck down this summer by the Supreme Court, would have banned “indecency on the World Wide Web.” The prospect of government censorship shook Silicon Valley.

Now, several Gore-Tech participants are working with administration officials to develop new tools to help parents censor the Internet for their children.

While the participants are perfectly willing to offer advice on issues affecting their industry directly, some of the most animated discussions have involved new uses of technology throughout the economy and strategies for improving public education.

In fact, no one issue energizes the Gore-Tech execs quite like education, in large part because they have had a difficult time trying to hire qualified employees to staff their rapidly expanding businesses.

“Getting educated employees is our greatest challenge,” says Marc Andreessen, 26-year-old co-founder of Mountain View-based Netscape Communications Corp. and another Gore-Tech regular. Netscape, which developed one of the two leading Web “browser” programs, has mushroomed from two employees in 1994 to 2,400 today.

During the group’s February meeting at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, the executives expressed dismay at what they regard as the failings of America’s public schools.

Gore challenged the participants to come up with their own education reform initiative. A lively give-and-take ensued, with the young entrepreneurs jumping from their chairs to draw diagrams with bright markers.

The result was “Dashboard,” an ambitious project designed to link public school parents, students and teachers in a nationwide, interactive computer network.

Unveiled at a national family conference hosted by Gore in June, it uses a new technology called “push” to make it easy for parents and teachers to communicate with each other and track students’ progress.

“It’s very exciting to use our programs in schools. It makes us feel good,” says Polese, the Palo Alto software entrepreneur whose company, Marimba, developed push technology.

“I don’t want to sit around and talk about issues,” says Polese. “I want to take action.”

Gore says the group’s problem-solving, can-do attitude is what keeps him coming back.

“It’s much easier for me to articulate challenges to a group ready to hear them,” Gore says.

The meetings, in turn, have given the high-tech executives a rare chance to voice their concerns at the highest level of government.

In mid-June, the Silicon Valley executives persuaded Clinton to have dinner with them at the home of a high-tech investment banker in San Francisco. During the meeting, Art Levinson, president of Genentech, a leading biotech company, caught the president’s attention by telling him of a potential problem involving new drug approvals. The Prescription Drug User Fee Act will expire Oct. 1 and, unless Congress renews it, hundreds of doctors involved in testing and approving drugs for the Food and Drug Administration will be fired, jamming up the approval of pharmaceuticals.

Levinson’s warning got Clinton’s attention, and the president immediately instructed an aide to get on top of it. The major obstacles to passing FDA reform legislation, which would extend the act, have been cleared up and the measure now awaits likely congressional action after Labor Day.

Since the monthly sessions began, Gore has gradually won the respect of the Silicon Valley executives, most of whom say they can’t imagine supporting anyone else for president in 2000.

Beyond individual votes, the considerable wealth of many of the individuals--and companies--involved in Gore-Tech makes them an attractive source of financial contributions. And several participants volunteered that they would be eager to support the vice president financially if he were to run in 2000, though they said that they had not been solicited during the meetings.

“The series of meetings the vice president has had with the Silicon Valley CEOs has not been political,” says Ginny Terzano, the vice president’s spokeswoman. “He has not asked for funds in the meetings.”

Since the group did not form until after the inauguration, any contributions made to the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign would have been as individuals. “If they did contribute [in 1996], I think it was on a very small scale,” adds a White House official who asked not to be named.

A preliminary check of Federal Election Commission records indicates that individuals now active in Gore-Tech gave thousands of dollars to the Democratic National Committee’s soft-money accounts in the 1995-96 election cycle--much of it for activities at the state and local level.

San Francisco investment banker Sanford R. Robertson, for instance, is listed as giving more than $200,000 to various DNC accounts between January and July of 1996. Charles Geschke is listed as giving almost $40,000 in 1995 and 1996.

And Doerr and three other Gore-Tech participants attended an intimate fund-raising dinner for Clinton-Gore in Silicon Valley in September, according to Wade Randlett, a Democratic political operative in Silicon Valley who organizes the Gore-Tech series.

“Of all the people who have come to the Gore meetings, fewer than 10% have given any money,” adds Randlett. Since the Gore-Tech series started in January, no one has been asked to donate.

Doerr, a well-known venture capitalist who can pull fund-raising strings in Silicon Valley, is confident Gore will get much more than money or votes.

“This is a political leader who uses the Net, uses the Web, understands what an Adobe Acrobat is all about. When you walk into a meeting with him, his first question is, ‘Just what exactly is going to be the future of Java?’ And he knows it’s not a cup of coffee,” Doerr says. “I don’t see another political leader on the national scene who gets it.”

What the Gore-Tech participants can’t figure out is why other politicians haven’t been beating down their doors as well.

“You know what’s amazing? Where the hell are the Republicans? I really think the Democrats are going to walk away with the Valley,” says C-Net’s Minor, who describes himself as a lifelong Republican but now finds himself backing Gore.

“You have to understand our industry if you want to be president in 2000,” Minor says. Failing to do so, he adds, “would be like being a politician in the ‘30s and ‘40s and not understanding the implications of the automobile.”

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‘Gore-Tech’ Group

Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are regular participants in montly brainstorming sessions with Vice President Al Gore. They include:

* Marc Andreessen, co-founder, Netscape Communications

* Brook Byers, partner, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers

* Scott Cook, founder, Intuit Corp.

* John Doerr, venture capitalist, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers.

* David Ellington, CEO, NetNoir

* John Gage, chief science officer, Sun Microsystems.

* Chuck Geschke, president, Adobe Systems.