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Company founders fortunate enough not only to reap but also to keep their winnings sometimes find the attention they receive to be unsettling. The new multimillionaires begin to worry about kidnap attempts on themselves and their families. They erect security fences around their homes, install elaborate burglar alarms and buy faster cars. Sy Merns, founder of Syms, a chain of eleven off-price clothing stores mostly in the Northeast, cashed in some $33 million worth of shares when his company went public in September, and his stock holdings are estimated at more than $110 million. Because of concerns about his safety, Merns refuses to allow himself to be photographed, even though he appears in his own television commercials.
Sometimes such fears are unfortunately justified. Gulfstream Aerospace Founder Paulson's son Michael, 28, was ambushed by two men in front of his Savannah home one night last month. The younger Paulson pulled out a .22-cal., two-shot derringer magnum and killed one of the men. The second was arrested shortly afterward. Police recovered handcuffs, a gag and a tape cassette with a message requesting $1.2 million in ransom.
A few overnight multimillionaires, though, revel in their new prominence. Apple Computer Co-Founder Steven Jobs, who is now worth about $185 million, has toyed with the idea of going into politics and was seen escorting Actress Diane Keaton to a Manhattan disco. When Altos Computer Systems Founder David Jackson began counting his wealth in nine figures, he turned up at the Kentucky Derby with then Governor John Y. Brown and was a guest at a San Francisco reception for Queen Elizabeth II.
Even such pleasant distractions, however, can often become troublesome. "It's easy to get sucked away from running the company," says Allen Michels, whose stock was worth $11.5 million when Convergent Technologies went public in 1982. "Politicians come knocking on the door; donations are sought from charities you never heard of; friends you've forgotten about come out of the woodwork; former adversaries become intimates." Observes Financier William Hambrecht, co-founder of Hambrecht & Quist, a San Francisco venture-capital and investment-banking firm: "Most of the guys who have failed are the ones who stopped listening and got carried away with their own ego. All of a sudden they became folk heroes and started to believe their own public relations."
In this sense, success can be as difficult to handle as failure. "It can lead to complacency, which blunts the ability to perceive new opportunities," says John Kao, a psychiatrist who teaches at Harvard Business School. "The money tends to put you in a different peer group, creating a sense of isolation and the need to seek others who are equally successful. Some rich people feel only they can understand each other."
Occasionally the byproducts of sudden wealth are tragic. The public sale of Eagle Computer stock in June made President
Dennis Barnhart's holdings