Mr. Andreas (Andy) von Bechtolsheim

At Stanford University, Bechtolsheim had devised a powerful computer (which he called a workstation) with built-in networking running the Unix operating system. He developed the workstation because he was sick of waiting for computer time on the central University system. Khosla approached him, wanting to build a business around selling the workstation. He also approached McNealy who was at another company after having completed his MBA at Stanford Business School in 1980. They named the company Sun, derived from "Stanford University Network." Bechtolsheim left Stanford, where he was enrolled in a Ph.D. program, to found the company. Sun Microsystems quickly became a success, with $1 billion in sales by 1988. By 2003, the market capitalization of Sun Microsystems was $11.5 billion. Bechtolsheim is a co-founder of HighBAR Ventures, an early-stage venture capital investment firm, along with two Sun colleagues: Bill Joy and Roy Thiele-Sardi?a. HighBAR's investments include Mirapoint, Brocade, Tasmania Networks, Brightmail, and Regroup.com, among others. Bechtolsheim and Cheriton were two of the first investors in Google, investing $100,000 in 1998. Bechtolsheim reportedly wrote the check to "Google Inc" prior to the company even being founded. The story that says Bechtolsheim coined the name "Google" is untrue. However, when he gave the check to Lawrence E. Page and Sergey Brin, Google's founders, they did not yet even have a checking account into which the check could be deposited.[3] Bechtolsheim seeded other companies in this fashion, including OnFiber Communications, the industry leader in metro transport for large enterprises (acquired by Qwest in 2006) and Wildblue Communications Inc. the Greenwood Village, Colorado based provider of satellite broadband internet services to homes and businesses in communities where terrestrial broadband access is either limited or unavailable, which began operating in June 2005.