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Andy BechtolsheimAmerican electrical engineer and investor
Date of Birth: 30.09.1955
Country:  USA |
Biography of Andy Bechtolsheim
Andy Bechtolsheim is an American electrical engineer and investor of German descent. He was born on September 30, 1955, near Lake Ammersee in Bavaria, Germany. He grew up on a farm in the Alps, where he entertained himself by experimenting with electronics from a young age. In 1963, his family moved to Rome, Italy, and in 1968, they settled in Nonnenhorn, a Bavarian town near Lake Constance.
At the age of 16, Bechtolsheim designed an industrial controller based on the Intel 8008 for a local company, using the income from his invention to fund his education. He became a student at the Technical University of Munich and participated in a scientific youth competition for young inventors, winning a prize in physics in 1974. In 1975, he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study in the United States at Carnegie Mellon University, where he earned a master's degree in computer engineering in 1976.
Afterward, Bechtolsheim moved to Silicon Valley to work at Intel, but he left when the company transferred him to Oregon. He then found a summer job at Stanford University and earned his Ph.D. there. At Stanford, Bechtolsheim developed a powerful computer called a workstation, with an integrated network, known as the "SUN workstation" - an abbreviation for "Stanford University Network." The workstation was based on the Xerox Alto computer, developed by Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. Bechtolsheim served as a consultant to Xerox for free, gaining access to all their research. Forest Baskett and Vaughan Pratt also contributed to the SUN project, with support from the Department of Computer Science and DARPA, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Bechtolsheim tried to interest other companies in manufacturing workstations but faced indifference. As a result, he co-founded Sun Microsystems in February 1982 with Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy, and Bill Joy. They secured funding from investors based on a short business plan, and Bechtolsheim left Stanford to join the new company. In 1988, Sun Microsystems reached $1 billion in sales.
In 1995, Bechtolsheim left Sun Microsystems and founded Granite Systems, a company that developed high-speed network switches. A year later, Cisco Systems acquired the company for $220 million, and Bechtolsheim received 60% of the proceeds. He became a vice president and general manager at Cisco until he left the company in 2003 to lead Kealia, Inc. In February 2004, Sun Microsystems acquired Kealia, and Bechtolsheim returned as senior vice president and chief architect. In 2005, he participated in the founding of Arastra, later renamed Arista Networks. In October 2008, Bechtolsheim left Sun Microsystems again to become the CEO of Arista Networks, while still remaining a consultant for his first company.
In addition to his entrepreneurial pursuits, Bechtolsheim co-founded the investment firm HighBAR Ventures and made investments in companies such as Mirapoint, Brocade, Tasmania Network Systems, Brightmail, Regroup, and most notably, Google. In September 1998, he invested $100,000 in Google, and his business partner matched the amount. Today, Bechtolsheim's net worth is estimated at around $2 billion, making him one of the most successful American investors in the field of computer technology.
