Five Characteristics of America's Most Successful Entrepreneur

Andy Bechtolsheim is perhaps the most successful entrepreneur in America. He cofounded Sun Microsystems, invented the workstation, was Google's first investor (now worth about $1 Billion), and founded or funded a laundry list of successful companies. He was also a VP at Cisco for 7 years. We can all learn a lot from this brilliant, American icon, so I compiled:

Five Characteristics of America's Most Successful Entrepreneur:

He acts on his own instincts. He doesn't over-think, which can lead to analysis paralysis. According to Google founder Sergey Brin:

"We met him [Andy] -- on the porch of a Stanford faculty member's home in Palo Alto. We gave him a quick demo. He had to run off somewhere, so he said, instead of us discussing all the details, why don't I just write you a check? It was made out to Google Inc. and was for $100,000."

He gets the importance of being lean and mean. Big company experience at Sun and Cisco have not corrupted his entrepreneurial DNA. According to the NY Times, Bechtolsheim's latest venture - Arista Networks - had fewer than 50 employees and no CEO when it began shipping systems.

"One mistake a lot of start-ups make with the encouragement of venture capitalists is to hire the whole management team upfront," said Mr. Bechtolsheim. "You have a lot of people twiddling their thumbs and spending money."

He may be a technogeek, but he's also an opportunistic businessman.

"I'm always driven by opportunities. We started Sun around the workstation opportunity (from) the work I did at Stanford ... Then Sun evolved into a server company, which was another great opportunity ... In 1995, I saw an opportunity around [gigabit] networking -- so I left Sun to pursue that. I ended up being acquired by Cisco for a lot of money."

He's still humble and customer-centric, in spite of his success. Zack Urlocker observed Bechtolsheim at a customer briefing:

"[Andy] was in the middle of explaining on the white board some of Sun's plans -- Andy was very patient in explaining it and showing how Sun is disrupting the market. Not in an arrogant way, but in a matter-of-fact, humble "this is the reason I am on the planet" kind of way. Needless to say the customer was impressed. Andy is definitely one of Sun's secret weapons."

He inspires and attracts high-quality executive talent. According to CEO of Arista Networks and former Cisco Sr. VP, Jayshree Ullal:

"After corporate life and managing multibillion dollars of business at Cisco Systems, you might ask why I chose Arista Networks? Working with Andy Bechtolsheim, and our long-standing 20+ year professional kinship."

I met Andy in 2003 when I was head of marketing for chip technology company Rambus. We needed a big name to keynote a conference and our Cisco sales guy somehow managed to sign up Bechtolsheim. I think the one word that best sums up Andy is insightful - he sees things that others miss.

According to technology evangelist Jeremy Geelan's "Is The Rise of Google The End of the Game for Everyone Else?"

Bechtolsheim was once asked "So is the game over?"

I have never forgotten his reply: "Only if no one changes the game."