My Brush with Greatness
I'd like to share with you the story of how I met one of Silicon Valley's greatest entrepreneurs (and a multi-billionaire) who funded my company back in 1992. This isn't just a story about the funding, but is more about the kind of person whom I admire in this technological center of the world.
This story is from back in early 1992, when I was working at a little financial data firm in Los Altos, California. A person came into our office to buy some data, which was unusual in itself, since almost all our sales took place on the telephone. Stranger still, he said he wanted to buy everything we sold, which was something like a $4,000 sale. For a company accustomed to selling data in chunks of about $50, it was pretty cool to have someone come in and just buy everything all at once.
I was curious who this mystery shopper was, and after a little exploration, I came to learn that he worked for a man whom I had never heard of – Andreas von Bechtolsheim or, simply, Andy. Andy was one of the four co-founders of a company I definitely had heard of, Sun Microsystems, which at the time was one of the biggest forces in the Silicon Valley. I tend to be fairly proud of my knowledge of Silicon Valley history and its figures, but Andy (being pretty much the opposite of Donald Trump with respect to self-promotion) was new to me.