Oral History of Andy Bechtolsheim

Interviewed by Douglas Fairbairn, on 2015-07-17 in Mountain View, California, X7546.2016
© Computer History Museum
Born in 1955, Andy describes growing up in Germany in a small rural town in the shadow of the Alps. Although he had no direct outside influence, Andy quickly developed a keen interest in electrical and electronic devices. He turned his basement into his electronic workshop. When the microprocessor was developed in the early 1970’s he immediately recognized the unique potential of this new device, becoming a self-taught expert. While working at a local shop which did machine controllers, he developed the idea to replace the random logic controllers with a programmable machine. He built the device from scratch, programmed it in binary, and made a very successful business selling these controllers to this local shop.
After winning a national science fair award, he won a Fulbright scholarship to come study in the United States. He enrolled in Carnegie Mellon as a graduate student and earned a Master’s degree in 1976 at the age of 19. He transferred to Stanford University in 1977 where he came into contact with the work at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. On seeing the Alto computer at PARC, he immediately realized it represented the future of computing. He embarked on building a similar personal workstation at Stanford where it became an immediate hit.
After several attempts to sell his workstation design to existing companies, he decided to once again start a company of his own, Sun Microsystems. After helping Sun grow into a major workstation vendor, Andy got the entrepreneurial itch again and started Granite Systems, a gigabit Ethernet company. Since then he has founded or funded many other companies, including being the first outside investor in Google. Andy is currently at his latest startup, Arista Networks, which went public in 2015.
Note: Transcripts represent what was said in the interview. However, to enhance meaning or add clarification, interviewees have the opportunity to modify this text afterward. This may result in discrepancies between the transcript and the video. Please refer to the transcript for further information - www.computerhis...
Visit computerhistory.org/collections/oralhistories/ for more information about the Computer History Museum's Oral History Collection.
Catalog Number: 102737928
Lot Number: X7546.2016

[@user-qo9sn9zx8z]

Thank you for sharing this video. It's very rare to find such a detailed discussion with Andy Bechtolsheim. Great nuggets of advice.

[@volekvolek1]

Andy and Bill Joy are the people who made Sillicon Vally what it is today and continue to innovate.

[@joseph-jg2ie]

This is gold, this is worth more than gold.

[@timanderson5723]

He taught himself to program an 8080 with flip switches. Amazing.

[@robertfeuerstein8280]

Most fascinating story, congratulations for having the foresight to invest in all those successful start ups. G. Haber is a distant cousin of mine.

[@janhofmann3499]

He really seems to be a pretty nice guy. Viele Grüße aus der alten Heimat..

[@tortepasti2]

And he seems like one of a few who really are "selfmade"

[@lenso010]

I’m just jealous of his success. Honestly.

[@user-pe8ir4iy1e]

Cisco was stolen from him and he still ended up a billionaire. Amazing mind!!

[@lenawhite382]

Still a Bavarian accent.

[@aaronvaldes3104]

but Andy, Google is what it is today because of Opensource.