PALO ALTO, Calif., April 22 -- Steve Perlman is enjoying the revenge of the geeks. From his third floor office here, he can peer down through a spacious atrium at the offices of his computer designers and reflect that while the new dot-com economy may be in disarray, the original Silicon Valley is doing just fine.
Mr. Perlman is a computer scientist whose career has included tours at the early video-game company Atari, Apple Computer and three other start-ups including WebTV, of which he was a co-founder and which was sold to Microsoft for $425 million in 1997.
On Monday, he will announce the first major financing for his new venture, Rearden Steel Technologies, which is developing computerized technology for the home-entertainment market. He is keeping the company's plans vague, but people familiar with his work say it is an effort to combine elements of television, the Internet and video games into a single entertainment system.
The financing is noteworthy not only for its size, $67 million, but for its sources, investors that include AOL, Cisco Systems, the Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and the former Netscape chief executive Jim Barksdale. Mr. Perlman said the financing was an indication that while the dot-com era may have ended, the original technology driven Silicon Valley is very much alive.
In fact, Mr. Perlman views the dot-com demise as a return to sensibility. ''It was the new California gold rush, and so many people came to Silicon Valley who were not technologists,'' he said. ''We would call these people carpetbaggers.''
Although Mr. Perlman will talk only in generalities, friends say that he has ambitious plans for Rearden Steel. The biggest gambles in Silicon Valley the last two decades have been taken by technically oriented entrepreneurs who have bet that they can use advances in hardware and software to create technology platforms that either redefine markets or create new businesses.
''In Silicon Valley,'' Mr. Perlman said, ''the big success stories that are lasting ones are ones that are run by geeks.''
After selling WebTV to Microsoft, a deal for which his share was $70 million, Mr. Perlman stayed on to run the division, which offers Web access through television sets. In an interview last week, he said that at first, he had hoped that he would be able to use Microsoft's size and resources to push in new directions.
But he said he soon found that Microsoft was more a ''fast follower'' than an innovator. ''What I found was that, like any big company, at Microsoft politics got in the way,'' he said.
So he left Microsoft in June 1999 and took several months off to explore new ideas, which led to starting Rearden Steel in January 2000. The name of the venture -- which he says is an place holder while his company is in ''stealth'' mode -- is an allusion to Hank Rearden, the protagonist in the 1957 Ayn Rand novel ''Atlas Shrugged.'' Rearden was an embattled industry executive, trying to defend his steel empire from government taxes and regulation. (Although Mr. Perlman said he disagreed with some of the author's philosophy of corporate supremacy, he said he was taken with the Rearden character.)
Mr. Perlman's big bet is precisely at the intersection of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, a nexis where he contends that computer technology can make a difference.
Richard F. Doherty, a computer and entertainment industry consultant, said that ''this is a platform play,'' a system on which others might develop specialized applications like games.
But Mr. Doherty, who is president of Envisioneering Inc., a technology assessment and market research firm, based in Seaford, N.Y., said that in trying to build a new entertainment platform, Mr. Perlman also needed to build new entertainment development tools, the equivalent of cameras, microphones and special-effects equipment for creating the new art forms his technology is meant to allow.
''I think Steve Perlman is going to produce a digital artists repertory company,'' Mr. Doherty said. ''He's made sure that the right tools and right canvases are there for creating the next Spielberg.''
In addition to offices in two locations in Palo Alto, Mr. Perlman has started Rearden Steel Studios in San Francisco's South of Market Street district. The studios include a motion-capture set where computer artists can create lifelike or superhuman action figures by monitoring the movements of human models.
Already, Mr. Perlman has used the studio as a laboratory for digital film technology, to work on several movie projects that he has started and to perform contract work for film and TV productions that require motion-capture technology. His recent clients have included HBO.
What will set him apart, if he succeeds, Mr. Perlman contends, is that he will create new computer-based technologies that advance home entertainment. Rearden Steel Technologies has applied for 38 patents in 15 months. The wherewithal to pursue true technical innovation, he said, ''is what sets this venture apart from his earlier work at WebTV.
''At WebTV the wolf was always at the door,'' he said. The company was chronically underfinanced. ''We had to design things very quickly. This time around we've had the luxury of doing things the right way.''
Investors, which also include the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Mayfield Partners, the satellite company Echostar, the software concern Macromedia and the Washington Post Company, are backing an effort that will reveal itself incrementally, Mr. Perlman said. No significant products are likely to be unveiled before early next year. Investors are hoping their patience will be rewarded by Mr. Perlman's passion and single-minded focus on designing home entertainment technologies.
His start came at the first big video-game company, Atari, in the early 1980's, fresh from Columbia University with a computer science degree. Subsequently his focused ambition frequently ruffled feathers in Silicon Valley.
Ted Kaehler, a former Apple Computer software designer, said that when he joined Apple in 1985, Mr. Perlman was a 24-year-old hardware designer with an office down the hall.
He was fervent about his idea of taking the new Macintosh technology and converting it into a television-based appliance. The idea left many people at Apple scratching their heads because television screen resolution was poor and the fonts appeared muddy. But Mr. Perlman would not be dissuaded, and he would frequently go into managers' offices at Apple and demand resources for the project. The visits would often end in shouting matches, Mr. Kaehler recalled.
''I thought Steve was a really smart guy,'' said Mr. Kaehler, who is now a member of the research and development group at Walt Disney Imagineering. ''And so every Friday I would track down a manager that he had infuriated and convince them not to fire him.''
Later, Mr. Kaehler said, he learned that other engineers had also petitioned managers on Mr. Perlman's behalf.
Mr. Perlman has mellowed little. One friend said that Mr. Perlman had the same passion in his pursuit of technology as Apple's founder Steven Jobs, only that Mr. Perlman is more technically oriented.
For his part, Mr. Perlman continues to take pride in being a self-described Silicon Valley ''geek.'' As he was about to turn 40 several months ago, one resolution he made was to stop spilling his food on his clothes while eating.
On the day of his birthday he found himself in Cafe Verona, a Palo Alto bistro. And, true to geek style, his spaghetti lunch almost immediately found its way onto his shirt.