Andreas von Bechtolsheim is not a household name. Yet he was deeply involved in a now very popular company, Google. Andrea wrote the first major check to fund Google. In fact he wrote the check to “Google Inc.” even before the company was founded. Google was something very new but he was confident of its outcome; Andrea was investing in the future.
His initial investment of $100,000 in 1998 is now worth around $2 billion in company stock. Andreas was able to give that amount because he was always involved with technology for future use and was also smart enough to know how to monetize his talent.
Andreas was born on September 30, 1955 in Bavaria, Germany. He grew up in an isolated farm and as a child experimented with electronics. At only 16 years of age he designed an industrial controller based on the Intel 8008 for a nearby company in Nonnenhorn, Germany where his family had moved. Royalties from the product supported much of his education.
On Fulbright scholarship he received his master’s degree in computer engineering in 1976 from the Carnegie Mellon University. He moved to the Silicon Valley to work for Intel in 1977 but quit after one week when they transferred him to Oregon. Andreas became a PhD student at Stanford although he did not finish.
He co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 and the company held its IPO in 1986. He founded other companies that were later sold and has invested in a number of technology companies as well. Andrea has always been out to push technology to its limits and knows how to profit from it, too.
Business Executives 
Posted on July 25, 2013
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