There has been much discussion about successful Stanford University startups such as Google, Yahoo, and Sun Microsystems. At ST@B, we would like to dedicate a series of posts to successful Berkeley student and faculty entrepreneurs. There are dozens of hugely successful Berkeley startups in sectors like medical devices, bioengineering, and energy. However, we will focus on Information Technology companies. This post will not include companies started by Berkeley alumni such as Intel (Gordon Moore, BS 1950), San Disk (Sanjay Mehrotra, MS 1980) or VMware (Edward Wang PhD, 1994).
Based on current and past public market valuations and impact on the current technology landscape, the top 3 most successful startups by Berkeley students and faculty are Apple Computer, Sun Microsystems (Yes, Berkeley can also take credit), and Inktomi.
Apple Computer
While pursuing his B.S. in Computer Science Steve Wozniak was working with Steve Jobs to fill orders for low cost personal computers. In 1967, in his third year at Berkeley, Wozniak decided to leave to found Apple Computer with Steve Jobs. The company IPO’d in December 1980, generating more money than any company since Ford in 1956. Although Wozniak left the company in 1987 he remains on the payroll and continues to be a motivation to thousands of Apple engineers. Under the leadership of Steve Jobs, Apple has grown to revenues of $32.5 billion and a market cap of $88 billion.
Sun Microsystems
Although Stanford gets most of the credit for Stanford University Network (Sun), one of the critical founders was Berkeley Masters student Bill Joy. After graduating in 1982 with a masters degree in computer science, Joy joined Sun as a founder. Joy made significant contributions to the Berkeley UNIX OS, the Java programming language, and JXTA. Sun has reached $13 billion in revenues and a $3.83 billion market cap.
Inktomi Corporation
Berkeley CS professor Eric Brewer and grad student Paul Gauthier started Inktomi in 1996 based on the success of the Berkeley search engine. They achieved great success as the engine behind search for portals like Yahoo. They reached a market cap of over $30 billion in 2000 until Yahoo dropped them for Google as the search provider. Inktomi was behind a series of high profile acquisitions including that of fellow Berkeley startup Fast Forward Networks (2000, $1.3bn). Some have even guessed that Microsoft’s $45 billion offer to acquire Yahoo in 2008 was motivated to acquire Inktomi assets integrated with Yahoo search. In 2003, after the dot-com crash, Inktomi sold to Yahoo for $235 million.
Some other companies we may cover another time:
Fast Forward Networks- Acquired by Inktomi in 2000 for $1.3bn
Cadence Design Systems- Public company; market cap- $1bn
Illustra- Acquired by Informix in 1996 for $400m
Matrix Semiconductors- Acquired by SanDisk in 2005 for $250m
LGC Wireless- Acquired by ADC in 2007 for $169m
Relational Technology Incorporated (RTI)- Aquired by ASK Corp. in 2000 for $110m
Keyhole- Acquired by Google in 2004 for an undisclosed price
Accept.com- Acquired by Amazon for an undisclosed price
If there is a company missing from this list, please feel free to send me a note.
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