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Andy Bechtolsheim wrote Google's first cheque, and gave me Bill Joy's email

Gave Hare Bill Joy's personal email address

About this entry

This is Jonathan Hare's account, with its provenance shown. The person or organization named has not yet claimed or corrected it.

Person

Who this is

Co-founder of Sun Microsystems, where his workstation design was the differentiator that let Sun leapfrog DEC's VAX, HP's minicomputers and IBM's in the scientific and technical market. Vinod Khosla's principal contribution as founding chief executive, by Jonathan Hare's account, was persuading him to join as a co-founder rather than merely licensing the design.

Later a founder of Granite Systems and then Arista Networks with David Cheriton. Wrote one of the two first cheques into Google — famously before the company legally existed.

The record

Where this intersects the work

Each entry below carries its own provenance — the source, and how it was processed. That is the condition on which this graph can be extended by anyone without degrading.

The trail exists so that people who were there can reconstruct their own memories, recognize what they helped incubate, and add to or correct the record — or forward the few pages that belong to someone they know.

1999–2001

The email address

Hare showed Bechtolsheim the Consilient architecture — Organic Technology, Business DNA, the whole adaptive-systems platform. Bechtolsheim gave him Bill Joy's personal email address, which was hard to get, and told Joy they should talk.

Hare's accountAuthor's direct narrative, recorded 2026
1999–2001

What happened next

Hare sent a PowerPoint deck of several megabytes. Joy killed the download rather than wait an hour for it and phoned instead: Andy says we should talk, let's talk. That call is where Hare met Bill Joy.

Hare's accountAuthor's direct narrative, recorded 2026
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Provenance

Where this came from

Everything above is a distillation. The primary source is published in full, so that any claim on this page can be walked back to what was actually said — and where the two differ, the source governs.

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What is missing, and how to fix it

This entry is deliberately incomplete. The gaps below are the things only certain people can settle — and settling one is a contribution like any other: recorded, timestamped and attributed to whoever made it.

If you were there

Correct anything wrong, add what only you know, or claim this entry as your own. Write to evidence@qpncatalyst.io and Jonathan directly (both are on the button) — a timestamped confirmation comes back with your submission attached, as your own independent record. No account, no permission, no institutional standing required.

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