

The Stanford Academic Who Wrote Google Its First Check (2012) - dsr12
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2012/08/01/professor-billionaire-david-cheriton/

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fightthehypo
I took a Distributed Systems class with Prof. Cheriton in 2007 for my Masters
degree. In the first few classes, I remember being awed by the wealth and
legacy of the man, and wanting to glean everything I could from him. It
quickly became apparent though that he hadn't updated his course materials or
lectures in over a decade, e.g. the pros and cons of distributed shared memory
vs COBOL RPC. The core topics were there, it was just presented in such a dry
manner.

Worse though, was that he would needlessly inject his very conservative
politics as total non-sequiturs. Test questions like "Hillary Clinton wants to
build [obviously unscalable system], explain why it won't work. I found it
very unprofessional.

Stanford records a video of every lecture, and enrolled students can then
watch them whenever. I remember sitting in my dorm room, watching one of his
75 minute lectures where there was literally 3 students in a 150 person
auditorium. It just floored me that this was how a billionaire was spending
his time. I do genuinely like the man, you could just tell he was capable of
so much more.

~~~
_delirium
I've heard Stanford described as a venture capital group with a vestigial
university attached. Unfortunately, course plans being updated this decade is
something that falls by the wayside when your professors basically have full-
time jobs elsewhere.

~~~
nilsbunger
That wasn't my experience of Stanford's EE or CS profs at all. They sometimes
take a sabbatical for a year to work on a startup, but when they're on campus
it always felt like they're fully engaged, and presenting up-to-date material.

Cheriton in particular is more of an academic purist than anything. He
probably just believes that the old material is the right way to learn
distributed systems, and all these new things are "just a fad".

I was part of Kealia as a chip designer, and I remember having a fight with
Cheriton over buying a waveform viewer for RTL simulation. It's a basic tool
that any chip person needs, but he felt it was just some fluffy GUI thing that
real engineers wouldn't need.

That argument was a bit nuts, but I came to really like him and appreciate the
purity of his perspective, even when I disagreed with it.

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jlgaddis
I met Andy Bechtolsheim a year or two ago when he dropped in on our small
event at Arista's HQ's in jeans and sandals. Surprisingly, I thought that he
was a very laid back, down to earth, guy.

Bechtolsheim also invested $100k in Google right about the same time that
Cheriton did. I remember being told that Page and Brin couldn't even deposit
the check as "Google" did not legally exist at the time (not sure if that's
true or not). Together they founded Arastra -- which is now Arista -- c.
2005.)

~~~
mprovost
The story goes that Page and Brin had intended to name the company "Googol"
after the number but Andy wrote it "Google" on the check and they had to
incorporate under that name to cash it.

~~~
adventured
That didn't happen.

Googol.com has been registered since 1995.

They took Google for that reason among several others.

~~~
mprovost
Of course there's a bit of urban legend around it but "several others" doesn't
make for a good anecdote. I actually heard the story from Andy himself.

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denzil_correa
Interesting thoughts. Social Networking is a "market whim" according to
Cheriton.

> Cheriton says he avoids pursuing market whims—he considers social networking
> one of them—and stays focused on breakthroughs that make measurable
> improvements to human life

I wonder at what time does he think it would be out of fashion.

~~~
thomaspaine
I don't think he's implying social networking will go out of fashion, but that
social networking companies themselves can be fashionable. For instance the
progression of "cool" social networking sites seems to progress pretty rapidly
e.g. myspace -> facebook -> twitter -> instagram -> snapchat.

To put it in Steve Blank terminology he likes to invest in companies that face
invention rather than market risk.

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davidtgoldblatt
If you're wondering why you've heard of him for non-entrepreneurial reasons,
Cheriton has made major academic contributions in distributed systems; he's an
author on the leases paper, the V operating system, and the "Understanding the
Limitations of CATOCS" paper, among many others.

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paulgb
The school of Computer Science at Waterloo (his alma mater) is named after
him:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_R._Cheriton_School_of_Com...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_R._Cheriton_School_of_Computer_Science)

~~~
mindcruzer
* Renamed following a $25 000 000 donation

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michalu
an interview where Cheriton expresses some opinion on future of US economy
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-
canada-13936930](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13936930)

~~~
fatjokes
He's Albertan all right.

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interconnector
His latest start-up is Hicamp Systems
([http://www.hicampsystems.com](http://www.hicampsystems.com)). According to
this patent,([http://goo.gl/fDjEYn](http://goo.gl/fDjEYn)), Hicamp stands for
Hierarchial Immutable Content Addressable Memory Architecture - looking
forward to this coming out of stealth mode.

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monsterix
Now here is the bigger part of the problem: how does an inventor or an
_entrepreneur-with-such-a-karma_ reach such an investor ( _quickly_ )? Getting
into Stanford is one way, of course, but that would be inefficient to do say a
"Google" now.

~~~
jurjenh
It was "inefficient" when Google did it... Right person in the right place
with the right contacts at the right time with a certain amount of luck on
your side. You can game some of these, but the thing not to forget is that it
takes time, and a quick connection is quickly forgotten.

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shn
Spending money is as much a skill as making it, and I do not mean only
investing or the pleasures of this world provides.

