By Joan Killough-Miller

Scott Krause was attracted to Silicon Valley by the chance to do meaningful work that may change the world.

As young people flocked to Silicon Valley in the "digital gold rush" of the late 1990s, journalist Po Bronson picked out a few recent arrivals to follow as they sought their fortunes in this land of high-tech opportunity. One was Scott Krause, now lead product manager at GO.com (formerly Infoseek) in San Francisco, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. The ups and downs of Krause's first year in San Francisco are interwoven with the tales of five others in Bronson's book, The Nudist on the Late Shift and Other True Tales of Silicon Valley (Random House, 1999). An adapted version appeared in the July 1999 issue of Wired magazine, with Krause and some of his fellow newcomers on the cover.

Like many others of his generation, Krause went west to tap into the mother lode of Internet development. After graduating from WPI in 1994, he earned an M.B.A. at the University of Tennessee, then worked for a year in Knoxville, where he had the opportunity to manage a few Internet-related projects. "I felt I was touching the industry," he says, "but I wanted to fully immerse myself in it." In 1997 he headed to San Francisco, a city he had fallen in love with when he went there as a student to complete his IQP (Interactive Qualifying Project) with the Sierra Club. There, in the center of the West Coast's high-technology industry, he hoped to find work he really believed in.

As Krause weathered the frustrations and setbacks of his first year in Silicon Valley, Bronson watched and waited for his idealism to fade. It didn't. Even when Krause missed a big financial opportunity--his first employer, Intershop, announced that it was going public just after Krause left to pursue more meaningful work at Infoseek--he's still smiling, and talking about how much he likes his new job, and how his work will benefit humanity. In Nudist, Krause is pegged as a "modern-day Hardy Boy" with a "plain vanilla idealism" that Bronson associates with the heartland of America.

"I never thought of myself that way," says Krause with a laugh, "as the naive, Midwestern type of person. Especially since I come from Massachusetts." Yet it is hard to talk with Scott Krause without wondering if he ever has a negative thought. "This is my dream job," he says. "I'm working for a leading company in a leading industry and I'm working on leading projects. It's pretty exciting. I think this may be one reason I came off as such a lofty idealist, but I really do believe that what we're doing for this industry is going to change the daily lives of people and how they work 10 years from now."

Another reason Krause's portrayal is so upbeat may be that a journalist friend warned him to be guarded about what he revealed. He says he was especially careful not to say anything negative about his employer. Others interviewed for Nudist--including the nudist himself--were up front about eccentric (and sometimes fraudulent or illegal) activities. Several requested anonymity in exchange for their stories.

Although he enjoyed his conversations with Bronson and the Wired photo shoot (as well as a supplementary interview and photo-op with the London Observer), Krause says the attention has hardly made him a celebrity. His notoriety did result in e-mail from long lost friends, and congratulations from higher-ups at his employer, but Krause has also had to endure a certain amount of teasing from his peers. Copies of the Wired cover appeared on office bulletin boards, adorned with Post-it(R) notes bearing comments from co-workers. Everyone expects "Hardy Boy Scott Krause" to live up to his image. "People would bust on me for leaving the office at 7:30--or even later," he reports. "They'd ask, 'What happened to those 70-hour weeks?'"

About the only complaint Scott Krause has about his life in Silicon Valley is the distance between him and his family and friends. He says he misses New England winters, although he still has strong memories of his last winter at WPI, when he would walk to campus from Bowdoin Street and pass cars that had been frozen under snow for months. "There's so much incentive for me to stay out here, from a career standpoint," he says. "I want to make the most of it while I'm here." Long-range, he would like to try working abroad for a few years, "but I would want to make sure that, by the time I move, there is a decent Internet industry in my destination."

Now that Infoseek has officially become GO.com, the fulfillment of The Walt Disney Company's promise to combine all of its Internet assets into a new business unit, Krause is excited about the opportunity to create new, unique products that integrate Infoseek's technology with Disney's content. He does worry that the company might lose its ability to innovate as is often the case with large bureaucracies. "If there's any reason I would leave, that would probably be it," he says.

Throughout his Silicon Valley saga, Krause stresses the value of job satisfaction over money--although he does not seem unhappy with the boost that the Disney alliance has given his present stock options. Is he any closer to the $20 million pot of gold that is portrayed as the standard reward for success in Santa Clara County? "I guess for me it's still the first million I'm shooting for," Krause laughs. "To me, that's a little bit less important than the nature of my work, because out here it's almost assumed that you're going to get to that point some day anyway, so why worry about it? Just have fun, and learn as much as you can along the way."