Lasting Memories

Michael J. Homer
1959-Feb. 1, 2009
Atherton, California

High-tech executive Michael J. "Mike" Homer died Feb. 1 at his home in Atherton after a two-year battle with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare neurodegenerative disorder. He was 50.

A leader in Silicon Valley for more than 20 years, Mr. Homer wrote the first business plan for Netscape Communications and created the marketing strategy for the young Silicon Valley company, which was founded in 1994. He was instrumental in marketing campaigns to convince the public that the Internet would succeed when few had heard of it, according to the financial data site, Bloomberg.com. When Microsoft Corp. presented its own browser, Internet Explorer, in 1995, Mr. Homer helped Netscape temporarily outpace Microsoft as companies raced to develop new online features, according to Marc Andreesen, Netscape co-founder, as quoted in a Feb. 4 article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

After leaving Netscape in 2000, following its acquisition by American Online Inc., Mr. Homer founded the technology company Kontiki, which he later sold to VeriSign. He also worked as an adviser to such companies as TiVo and Google, and was a director of Palm Inc, which made the original Palm Pilot. Mr. Homer launched his career at Apple in the 1980s, where he was the technology adviser to then-CEO John Sculley. He also worked at Go Corp.

Born and raised in San Francisco, Mr. Homer attended St. Ignatius College Prep and earned a bachelor of science degree from UC Berkeley.

A boating and baseball enthusiast and San Francisco Giants fan, he also coached his sons' Little League teams. He was known for his extraordinary intellect, tenacity, fierce loyalty and his hearty sense of humor, say family members. Mr. Homer and his wife, Kristina, started The Homer Family Foundation to fund education programs for the underprivileged.

Mr. Homer was a major donor to the Ronald McDonald House at Stanford, The Haas Center for Responsible Business at Berkeley, The Computer History Museum, and The California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences in University of California at San Francisco.

This past fall, Sacred Heart Prep in Atherton unveiled the Michael J. Homer Science and Student Life Center.

Mr. Homer is survived by his wife of 10 years, Kristina; his children, James, Jack, and Lucy; his mother, Irene Homer of San Francisco; and a sister, Sue Homer, of San Francisco.