Billionaire Pat McGovern, Founder of IDG, Dies at 76

Media pioneer Patrick McGovern died on Wednesday at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto at the age of 76. McGovern was the founder and chairman of International Data Group , which publishes  200 magazines, operates 460 websites and produces 700 events in 79 countries around the world. Its most well-known magazine, PCWorld, with 39 million readers in 49 countries, announced in July 2013 that it would move to an all-digital format in the U.S.

“IDG has lost a true visionary, and the IT community has lost one of its most exceptional citizens,” said newly elected IDG Board Chairman, Walter Boyd.

McGovern was one of the country’s most successful, self-made entrepreneurs, a true bootstraps billionaire.  He was worth $5.7 billion, ranked 244 among the World’s Billionaires in March. He first debuted on the Forbes 400 list of America’s richest in 1982, our inaugural issue. He was ranked 88 in America in the 2013 Forbes 400.

Born in Queens, he spent most of his childhood in Philadelphia. A construction manager’s son, he got interested in computers in tenth grade after reading a book, Giant Brains; or, Machines That Think, according to a 1985 Forbes article, written by Richard Behar. Inspired, he built a computer that was unbeatable in tick-tack-toe.  That won him a scholarship to MIT.  He helped pay for school by editing a Boston-based computer magazine Computers and Automation, the first U.S. computer magazine (apparently run by the author of Giant Brains). He was named its Associate Editor promptly after his 1959 graduation.

Five years later, in 1964, he founded IDG with $5,000 he got from selling his car.  He persuaded firms like Xerox , Burroughs and Univac to prepay $7,500 each for a census report, according to Behar, and hired high school students to count computers around the country.

In 1980 he was one of the first to establish a joint venture in China. Twelve years after that, he founded IDG Technology Ventures, one of the first VC firms in China.  Forbes profiled his successes in China in 1997, claiming at the time that “Pat McGovern has more readers in China than the People's Daily does.”

Over half a century, he grew the business into a far reaching media juggernaut with $3.55 billion in sales. The Boston, Mass-company, in which McGovern had an 84% stake, ranked 128 on Forbes 2013 list of biggest private companies in the U.S.

He and his wife Lore Harp donated $350 million to fund the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT in 2000. Their goal was to help understand the role of the human brain in health and disease.  No cause of death was given for McGovern. According to a company spokesperson, “Pat was a very private person and he asked his family to keep any information about his health within the family.  They have chosen to honor his request.” McGovern is survived by his wife Lore, his son Patrick McGovern and wife Raquel, his daughter Elizabeth McGovern and husband Scott Early, two stepdaughters and nine grandchildren.

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