Scott McNealy (born November 13, 1954) is an American businessman. He is most famous for co-founding the computer technology company Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Bill Joy, and Andy Bechtolsheim. In 2004, while still at Sun, McNealy founded Curriki,[1] a free online education service. In 2011, he co-founded Wayin, a social intelligence and visualization company based in Denver.[2] McNealy stepped down from his position as CEO of Wayin in 2016.[3]
Career
McNealy earned a Bachelor of Arts in economics from Harvard and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. McNealy has self-deprecatingly referred to himself as a "golf major" rather than a computer scientist.[4][5]
McNealy started out working at American Motors, where his father was vice chairman and vice president of marketing.[6] He later became manufacturing director at Onyx Systems, a vendor of microprocessor-based Unix systems.[7][8][5]
In 1984, McNealy took over the CEO role from Khosla, who ultimately would leave the company in 1985. On April 24, 2006, McNealy stepped down as CEO after serving in that position for 22 years, and turned the job over to Jonathan I. Schwartz. McNealy is one of the few CEOs of a major corporation to have had a tenure of over twenty years.
According to the book The Decline and Fall of Nokia, Scott McNealy was the "dream candidate" to become CEO of Nokia in 2010.[9] However, McNealy said he was not offered the job.[10]
In 2017, Scott joined the golf app startup 18Birdies as advisor and equity partner.[11]
In early 2018, he joined the Redis Labs Advisory Board.[12]
Wayin
In 2010, the same year Oracle Corporation purchased Sun, McNealy co-founded the social media intelligence company Wayin.[13] The new venture was not widely covered in the media; the day he invited reporters to his home to launch Wayin was the same day Apple co-founder Steve Jobs died.[3] Their product is an application store for brands to self-publish interactive advertising campaigns using reusable digital assets, removing the bulk of cost involved in delivering multi-channel digital advertising.[14]
Wayin sought out and merged with EngageSciences in 2016, to acquire senior staff and diversify their market. In May of that year, McNealy stepped down as CEO and EngageSciences head Richard Jones became CEO of the combined company.[3]
In July 2019, Wayin was acquired by Cheetah Digital.[15]
He is married to Susan Ingemanson.[23] They lived in
Portola Valley, CA,[19] now in Nevada, and have four sons: Maverick, Dakota, Colt, and Scout. He is known to be an enthusiastic ice hockey player and has been ranked as one of the best golfers in executive ranks.[4][24]
While at Sun, McNealy used the phrase “disagree and commit” (which later became a management principle adopted by other large cooperations) as early as some time between 1983 and 1991, as part of the line "Agree and commit, disagree and commit, or get out of the way".[28]: 39 [29][30]
In 1999, McNealy said, "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."[31] Writer Stephen Manes criticized the statement in his Full Disclosure column: "He's right on the facts, wrong on the attitude.... Instead of 'getting over it', citizens need to demand clear rules on privacy, security, and confidentiality."[32] The authors of Privacy in the 21st Century admitted, "While a shocking statement, there is an element of truth in it."[33]
McNealy was an early advocate of the networked environment; his company's motto was The Network is the Computer. At times, he has been known to be skeptical of products that do not integrate well with networked environments. One example McNealy has given involved the AppleiPod. As quoted in The Register, McNealy said, "There’s a pendulum thing where stuff is on the client side and then goes back into the network where it belongs. The answering machine put voicemail by the desk, and then it went back into the network. Your iPod is like your home answering machine. I guarantee you it will be hard to sell an iPod five or seven years from now when every cell phone can access your entire music library wherever you are."[34]
McNealy is a self-proclaimed "raging libertarian", although he often supports and endorses the Republican Party.[35] He makes regular appearances on the Fox Business Channel to discuss libertarian business issues.[36] In 2017, McNealy praised the 45th U.S. President, Donald Trump, for his free-market economic policies.[37] On September 17, 2019, McNealy hosted a fundraiser for Donald Trump's re-election campaign.[38][39]
^ abcIna Fried (May 4, 2016). "Scott McNealy is stepping down from the CEO job you didn't know he had". Recode. Retrieved December 4, 2017. McNealy officially launched Wayin back in October 2011, inviting reporters to his house to talk about the service on the evening of Oct. 5 — which turned out to be the same day that Apple CEO Steve Jobs died.
^ abJohn Steinbreder; Narayanan, S.; Murad, M.A. (June 1998). "Handicapping America's CEOs". Golf Digest. 7 (3): 215. doi:10.1159/000026045. Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, once quipped: 'Am I a computer scientist? No, I'm a golf major.' A former captain of the Harvard golf team, he now plays to a 3.2 Handicap Index – lowest of any top executive.
^Bruce Rogers (April 4, 2017). "Scott McNealy Builds Wayin To Make $1 Trillion Global Marketing Spend More Efficient". Forbes. Retrieved December 4, 2017. The company positions itself as a self-service platform that enables some of the world's biggest brands and publishers to create authentic, interactive campaign experiences that engage and activate consumers across all digital channels. Its digital asset creation tools offer drag and drop templates to easily create just about any marketing materials.
^Ballard, Greg (November 15, 2006). "Agree and Commit, Disagree and Commit". Stanford eCorner. Archived from the original on June 17, 2019. Retrieved June 17, 2019. This is a phrase, agree and commit, disagree and commit, that actually comes from Scott McNealy. At least that's where I was told it was from.
^Adams, Helen R.; Bocher, Robert F.; Gordon, Carol A.; Barry-Kessler, Elizabeth (2005). "The Future of Privacy in Libraries". Privacy in the 21st Century. Libraries Unlimited. p. 181. ISBN978-1-59158-209-0.
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