Interview with Scott McNealy – Part 1

I happened to meet Scott McNealy, Sun co-founder and Chairman, a few weeks back at Sun’s Executive Briefing Center (EBC) and so, armed with a compact voice recorder, I managed to sit down with him for an interview.

Q. We were in a customer meeting together and you pulled out a processor and started to sell the customer on Sparc technology and how it would be more power efficient for what they were doing. I was impressed that at this stage you’d still be selling.

My basic philosophy is “business selling.” I don’t know anything that you do that doesn’t require selling. Buying is selling. Raising money is selling. You’ve got to sell your products. My first and main tenet is no one ever went out of business for having too much business. The first thing you better do is figure out why people want to buy your stuff and you better give them some good reasons to do that.

When we started the company, the first thing we had to do was hire some people. People don’t come to your company if you tell them it’s a dump. They want to hear that it’s great, that it’s exciting, that it’s high integrity and that it’s a fun place to work and we’re going to work on some interesting stuff. So recruiting good people is selling. We also had to raise money and sell the investors that they ought to put their money with us. So I think the number one characteristic of a good leader –after integrity– is someone who’s persuasive.

Q. How often do you get out to see customers these days?

The real question is how often do I get home! I don’t travel much during the summer when my boys are out of school. I think I went three months traveling every week. I try to get home on the weekend to see my boys. I put on over 150,000 miles a year on an airplane. My job is to go out and evangelize and to tell the story. In the next two or three months I’ll be going to China, South America and the Middle East. I’ll be wearing out the airplane seats!

Q. How do you decide where to spend your time?

I sat down with Jonathan and asked what are some of the real growth opportunities?’ He laid out the Middle East, India, China, Brazil, Russia, all as big opportunities. So one of the things I can do is go out and see governments, see the press, go to customer events, do keynotes and meet with some of our most important customers, from enterprises to start-ups. There are lots of good things to do in all these places.

Q. It seems surprising that both you and Andy Bechtolsheim are still active at Sun after so many years. What is it about Sun that keeps you fully engaged?

Working hard is one part of it, the other part is where you work. Greg Norman still likes to play golf. So does Lee Trevino. I like to do business. Why do I do it at Sun? Well, I’m the largest individual share holder. I love all the folks here. I love the mission. I think we’re doing great things. I love the cause of eliminating the digital divide while doing no harm to the planet. And I believe the by-product of our work is some very good things: Tele-medicine, distance learning, home banking and a very green story. It’s a great place to work. My golf game sucks. I’m never going to make it on the senior tour, so I might as well keep working!

Q. What do you think of the work Andy’s doing in Solid State Drives (SSD) using Flash memory?

There are two people in the computer industry that I think are top of the world: Steve Jobs in the consumer space and Andy Bechtolsheim on the industrial side. In consumer technology Steve is easily the most prolific, influential and game changing icon we have in the industry.

On the industrial side, whether you’re talking about networking, storage or server technology, I don’t think there’s anyone to compare with Andy Bechtolsheim. He’s the most prolific, the most innovative. He’s driven more architectural innovations and computing innovations in hardware infrastructure than anyone. He’s just not as well known. There are two reasons. First of all, he’s not a showman. He’s very reserved, very quiet. He doesn’t stand up on stage. Secondly, he’s selling industrial gear. Everyone who’s using the Internet is using Andy’s stuff. Way more than they’re using Steve’s stuff! But people just don’t know it. I think Andy’s probably the most underrated, under-recognized superstar in the history of the computer world.

Part 2 of the interview will continue in the next posting where we cover more of Andy Bechtolsheim’s work, McNealy’s view of open source and what he would have liked to have done differently at Sun.