Andreas's von Bechtolsheim / Entrepreneur (IT)

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Andreas's Maria Maximilian (Andy) of Bechtolsheim (* 1956 at the bunting lake) a German is computer scientist and entrepreneur living in the silicone Valley (the USA).

It was 1982 one of four founders of Sun Microsystems and 1998 one of the first investors with Google. With an estimated fortune of 1.1 billion " it is led at place 77 of the list of the richest Germans of the manager magazine; on "the Forbes "- billionaire list reserves it seat 512 (conditions: March 2006).

Family and childhood

Andreas's von Bechtolsheim second of four children of a people school teacher is and lived first on a lonely farm near the bunting lake in Bavaria. From 1961 to 1963 it visited the village school, afterwards the family pulled to Rome, where it visited among other things the private German school and by its father was informed. 1968 drew the family after nun horn on the Bodensee, where he put 1973 down with 16 years into Lindau its Abitur.

Early its technical interest and his discovery urge showed up expenditure coining/shaping width unit: already as six-year one it assembled radios and loudspeakers and experimented with electronic construction units. With 17 years it developed a microcomputer on basis Intel 8008 of processor, which served for the control of sheet metal dance machines, for one with the family got used to entrepreneurs. From this it received from 100 DM for each equipment to royalties. With 18 years it won 1974 with its third participation the federal competition youth researches in the field of activity physics with a work over "the exact flow measurement by ultrasonic ".

Training

After the Abitur Bechtolsheim began a study of electro-technology with support of the study donation of the German people with emphasis data processing at the technical University of Munich. it changed and acquired 1975 with the help of a Fulbright scholarship to the Carnegie Mellon university in Pittsburgh, the USA, 1976 its conclusion as master in computer science.

it pulled and accepted 1977 in the silicone Valley a student summer job at the Stanford university as a programmer with a CAD project. Later it was accepted there than graduate student and received entrance to Xerox the PARC.

he began 1980 or 1981 on suggestion of Forest Basket with the development of a computer, which should serve as personal computers in the computer network. As basis it used the efficient Motorola 68000-Prozessor, which possessed a large linear address area as 32-Bit-Prozessor and supported therefore a large main memory. With the help of a CAD system it sketched the main processor plate, the diagram map and the Ethernetkarte. During this time it was supported among other things by the US military research authority.

The entrepreneur

Establishment of Sun Microsystems

Bechtolsheim was convinced that the new concept of an efficient and interlaced personal computer was also low-priced realizable promisingly and with the arising 32-Bit-Prozessoren. The users became independent of the computing time of the central computer, without losing the advantage of the cross-linking, which was given as operating system by the use of Unix.

Several attempts of the university to let the draft under license build failed however. Thereupon Bechtolsheim 1982 its graduate student place gave up and based together with its study colleagues Scott McNealy and Vinod Khosla as well as Bill Joy of the University of Berkeley its own enterprise. Financial sources were found fast. Their company they called '' SUN '' as acronym for "Stanford University network ". "the SUN 1 "workstation mentioned was offered for a price of less than 10,000 US Dollar, was superior to many large computers and formed the foundation-stone of the further entrepreneurial success.

Bechtolsheim functioned with Sun starting from 1985 as Vice President Technology. Sun went 1986 to the stock exchange, the business developed very well. 1988 were exceeded the turnover threshold by 1 billion US-$; ten years later were it nearly ten billion dollar. 2003 amounted to the share value of Sun 11.5 billion US-$.

Further Startups

1995 looked for Bechtolsheim new challenges. It left SUN and based with granite of system a new enterprise, in order to develop high-speed components for applications of Internet (network Switches). 1996 were taken over granites for 220 millions US-$ by Cisco Systems. At this time Bechtolsheim possessed 65% of the firm portions. It becomes Vice President OF engineering with Cisco and worked in different positions on the development of new network techniques, last as a general manager of the Gigabit Switching department. In December 2003 it left the enterprise, in order to already dedicate itself to a further Startup, that 2001 together with its business partner with granite, Davit Cheriton, created enterprises Kaelia.

Return to Sun

In February 2004 Kaelia of Sun Microsystems by stock swap was transferred. With Bechtolsheim "the coworker No. 1 returned "to Sun, where he is active since that time as a senior Vice President and chief architect. In September 2005 Sun presented "the Bechtolsheim machine in such a way specified ": the new Galaxy series are based on Opteron processors with two central, parallel arithmetic and logic units of AMD, which Intel are considered to the processors of market leaders as superior. Ten operating systems are supported, apart from different Unix derivatives and Linux variants also Microsoft Windows.

The investor

Apart from the own establishments of an enterprise Bechtolsheim is very successful also as an investor and with more than 20 reestablishments by a Anschubfinanzierung and the switching of risk capital starting already gave. He dedicates himself thereby above all Design automation (EDA) to the range of the electronics, the software to the draft of microprocessors, since such applications already during its time in Stanford its interest applied.

The probably only larger investment in Germany was 1992 its participation in Hamburg software house the star division, which was taken over 1999 completely by Sun. Its Office package StarOffice represents today the main alternative to the applications of offices of Microsoft.

Its probably best investment transacted Bechtolsheim 1998. Over his business partner David Chriton he became acquainted with the Stanford students Larry PAGE and Sergey Brin, which presented the concept of a new Internet search technology. In addition it belonged to the first investors of Google and mediated the contact to the risk capital giver John Doerr. In an interview with the restaurant week in September 2005 it called Google "the maddest idea, which found accomodation me ever ". After the stock exchange course of Google became estimated the value of its participation at the beginning of of 2005 on 500 million US-$.

Honors and memberships

Initial member of the California "west Coast Campus "of the Carnegie Mellon university
Smithsonian Leadership Award for innovation
Member in that national Academy OF engineering