Sun Microsystems’ Pioneering Co-Founder Gives A Rare Interview – with Scott McNealy

Scott McNealy, Failure, Hiring, PR / Media Marketing

Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystem’s co-founder, hasn’t given many interviews since his company’s $7.4 billion sale to Oracle, but he agreed to spend an hour on Mixergy to talk about:

– How he sold computers by learning to grab the media’s attention with statements like, “You have no privacy. Get over it.”

– Why entrepreneurs need to be admired as much as any great philanthropist.

– How the clever founder of Ingboo, got him to be an adviser.

– Why the company he started before Sun failed, and how you can avoid similar mistakes.

– Why, as leader, you’re not allowed to go out and have beers on Friday night.

– Much, much more.

Scott McNealy

Scott McNealy is the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, the computer technology company he started in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Bill Joy, and Andy Bechtolsheim.

 

Three messages before we get started. If you’re a tech entrepreneur, don’t you have unique legal needs that the average lawyer can’t help you with? That’s why you need Scott Edward Walker of Walker Corporate Law. If you read his articles on VentureBeat, you know that he can help you with issues like raising money or issuing stock options or even deciding whether to form a corporation. Scott Edward Walker is the entrepreneur’s lawyer. See him at WalkerCorporateLaw.com.

And do you remember when I interviewed Sara Sutton Fell about how thousands of people pay for her job site? Look at the biggest point that she made. She said that she has a phone number on every page of her site because, and here’s a stat, 95 percent of the people who call end up buying. Most people, though, don’t call her. But seeing a real number increases their confidence in her and they buy. So try this. Go to Grasshopper.com and get a phone number that will make...

Continue reading the transcript...