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When Jobs' remarks are repeated to Jeff Braun, he says, "That's what it's about! It's a vision." Braun is the co-founder of Maxis, which makes computer-simulation games. The company went public last May, and now Braun's stake is valued at about $79 million. To commemorate deals, investment banks make Lucite cubes containing miniature versions of the "tombstone" ads that run in newspapers announcing an offering. Braun holds up his memento of the Maxis IPO and says, "I'm proud of this. This represents the maturing of the company. It says you're an adult now. You can go out in the real world."
In his youth, Braun, 40, didn't seem headed for the real world. A native of Los Angeles, he spent eight years going to various colleges--Claremont Colleges in Pomona, Lake Tahoe Community College, Sacramento State--without ever receiving a degree. Eventually, he dropped out to earn $15 to $20 an hour working for a video-game distributor. "I got a lot of experience playing the early arcade games," he says with a grin, "'testing,' as we used to say, to make sure the machines worked properly--for hours on end."
In 1987 he met Will Wright, who showed Braun a game called Metropolis that he had been working on. "I went ballistic," Braun says. "I knew immediately." Wright told him that everyone had turned the game down, but Braun asked him if he wanted to form a company based on the product. For the next two years, Braun and Wright worked out of Braun's apartment. "The programmers were in the living room, and the kitchen was the mail room," Braun says. "One of the bedrooms was an administrative office, and the other bedroom was mine, and it had a sign that said keep out. We had about six people."
The game, renamed SimCity, was an instant success. Players create their own city and make decisions about managing the environment, taxes, police protection and so on. Raising taxes too high? The residents might start moving to neighboring towns. Worse still, they might vote the mayor (you) out of office. Maxis makes other games along the same lines. It now employs nearly 200 people and has revenues of $55 million.
AS FOR HIS NEWFOUND WEALTH, Braun sounds like Andreessen. "What you're seeing is a lot of zeroes in your net worth, but not a lot of zeroes in your bank account. It's not real! I can't go to a 7-Eleven and buy a Coke with that money." He too has modest tastes. "I'm not into boats. I'm not into planes. I'm not into clothes. So it's really hard for me!" he says, laughing. "So what's available? I got myself a nicer home, and that's about it. And I went out and bought my parents a house too. I felt like one of those sports guys, you know"--he puts on a dumb-jock accent--"'Duh, I bought a house for my parents...'"
Braun insists that it's not the money that keeps him doing what he is doing. "I can retire, Jim Clark can retire, Steve Jobs can retire," he says. "We don't have to go to work if we don't love it. But we love it! We're not saying, 'Oh, my God, if I work another year, I can make another $10 million' or something. That's not the motivation."