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Grizzly Bulls’ Billionaires Index

⬅ # 115 Wang Chuanfu|# 117 Ravi Jaipuria ➡

# 116 Andy Bechtolsheim 

$16.3B

Real Time Net Worth
as of 5/13/2024
-$181.7M (-1.11%)

# 116 Andy Bechtolsheim 

$16.3B

Real Time Net Worth
as of 5/13/2024
-$181.7M (-1.11%)
OccupationCofounder, Chief Development Officer and Chair, Arista Networks
Source of WealthGoogle
Age68
ResidencePalo Alto, California
Marital StatusSingle
EducationMS, Carnegie Mellon University
Age-Adjusted Net Worth$9.50B
Andy Bechtolsheim
Andy Bechtolsheim
Germany
Net worth: $16.3B

Self-Made Score 

Wealth History

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Biography

Personal Life

Andreas Maria Maximilian Freiherr von Mauchenheim genannt Bechtolsheim was born on September 30, 1955, in Hängeberg am Ammersee, Bavaria, Germany.
Bechtolsheim grew up in an isolated house without television, sparking his interest in electronics from a young age. The family moved to Rome in 1963 and later to Nonnenhorn on Lake Constance in Germany in 1968.
At the age of 16, he designed an industrial controller based on the Intel 8008, supporting much of his education through royalties.
He studied computer engineering at the Technical University of Munich and earned a Master's degree in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1976. Subsequently, he pursued a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Stanford University.
Despite spending most of his life in the US, Bechtolsheim retained his German nationality and did not seek US citizenship.

Career

At Stanford, Bechtolsheim designed the SUN workstation, a powerful computer with built-in networking, inspired by the Xerox Alto computer developed at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.
In 1982, he co-founded Sun Microsystems with Scott McNealy, Vinod Khosla, and Bill Joy, becoming employee number one.
Sun Microsystems went public in 1986 and reached $1 billion in sales by 1988.
Bechtolsheim left Sun in 1995 to found Granite Systems, a Gigabit Ethernet startup, which was later acquired by Cisco Systems for $220 million in 1996.
In 2001, he co-founded Kealia, Inc. with Stanford Professor David Cheriton, focusing on advanced server technologies. Sun Microsystems acquired Kealia in 2004.
Bechtolsheim, along with Cheriton, founded Arastra in 2005, later renamed Arista Networks. He left Sun Microsystems to become the Chairman and Chief Development Officer of Arista in 2008.

Investments

Bechtolsheim, along with David Cheriton, invested $100,000 each in Google in September 1998, becoming early investors in the company.
He made successful investments in electronic design automation (EDA) companies, including Magma Design Automation and Co-Design Automation.
Invested in Tapulous, a music game maker for Apple iPhone, which was later acquired by the Walt Disney Company in 2010.
Joined George T. Haber to invest in wireless chip company CrestaTech in 2006 and 2008.
Invested in Claria Corporation and PerimeterX, an automated attack mitigation SaaS, among other ventures.

How long would it take you to become as rich as Andy Bechtolsheim?

If you started with $10,000 and invested an additional $500 each month at a 44.01% CAGR, it would take you 5 years to reach Andy Bechtolsheim's net worth of $16.3B.

Is this realistic? It depends how closely the VIX-TA-Macro Advanced model performs to its history in the future. Since Grizzly Bulls launched on January 1, 2022, it's returned 40.45% compared to 10.08% for the S&P 500 benchmark.

Enter data in all but one field below, then calculate the missing value

Andy Bechtolsheim is very wealthy, but what's stopping you from reaching that same level of success? As summarized in our five fundamental rules to wealth building, becoming wealthy in a modern capitalist economy is not complicated. There's actually only three variables:

  1. Your starting capital
  2. Your earnings after expenses
  3. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of your savings

Most people start with zero or very little, so if you weren't born into wealth, don't fret! The majority of the fortunate folks listed in our Grizzly Bulls’ Billionaires Index came from middle class or lower backgrounds. The most distinguishing characteristic of the group is their ability to consistently earn a high CAGR on their savings.

Every billionaire has a unique strategy to achieve high CAGR. For Andy Bechtolsheim, Google is the primary source. Whether you choose to invest your savings in your own businesses or the businesses of others is not as important. The salient piece of the puzzle is ensuring that your hard-earned savings are generating sufficient CAGR to reach your long term goals.

Most people simply invest their money in index funds and call it a day. There's nothing wrong with this approach, but it guarantees relative mediocrity. To achieve greatness, you need to invest your money to earn higher than average returns. In the long run, better investors will always finish ahead of better earners.

Source: Grizzly Bulls reporting

Methodology: Grizzly Bulls' Billionaires Index is a daily ranking of the world's billionaires and richest people. Grizzly Bulls strives to provide the most accurate net worth calculations available. We pull data from public equity markets, SEC filings, public real estate records, and other reputable sources.

The index is dynamic and updates daily at the close of U.S. stock market trading based on changes in the markets, economy, and updates to Grizzly Bulls' proprietary algorithm of personal wealth calculation. Stakes in public companies are tracked daily based on the relevant closing prices of the underlying securities. Additionally, stakes in private companies, cash, real estate, and other less easily valued assets are updated periodically through careful analysis of insider transactions, comparable public company sales / EBITDA multiples, etc.

Edited by: Lee Bailey