| Name: | Bill Joy |
| Net Worth: | $1 billion |
| Source of Wealth: | Sun Microsystems / HighBar Ventures |
| Born: | November 8, 1954 |
| Age: | |
| Country: | USA |
| Wife: | Shannon O’leary |
| Children: | 4 |
| Residence: | Mill Valley |
| Private Jet: | Unknown |
| Yacht: | ETHEREAL |
Bill Joy (William Nelson Joy) is the co-founder of Sun Microsystems and the founder of HighBar Ventures. He was born on November 8, 1954. He is married to Shannon O’Leary. They have 4 children.
Bill originally founded Berkeley Software Distribution in 1978. BSD was an operating system based on Research Unix. BSD began life as a variant of Unix that programmers at the University of California at Berkeley, initially led by Bill Joy.
In 1982 Bill joined Sun Microsystem, and he is considered one of its co-founders. The Sun name is derived from the initials of the Stanford University Network
Sun is best known for creating the Java programming language. But Sun products included computer hardware, such as servers and workstations. Sun also developed storage systems and software products, including the Solaris operating system.
Sun grew to more than 38,000 employees.
In 2010 Oracle bought Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion. But If we understand correctly, Joy had already sold all his shares at the 1986 IPO of Sun. (We have been searching for the 1986 IPO prospectus, but couldn’t find one ;-) ) Also, Kleiner Perkings had invested in the company before its IPO.
So the 2010 transaction did not make him a billionaire.
Joy later founded HighBar Ventures.
HighBar Ventures was formed in 1995 as a private investment firm for founding members of Sun Microsystems and Brocade.
It was founded by Bill Joy and Andy Bechtolsheim together with Roy Thiele-Sardiña. The firm’s name is an acronym of the first names of the firm’s three co-founders (‘B’, ‘A’ and ‘R’).
Investments include BrightMail, SANLight, game developer Tapulous, and CAW Networks.
In computing, Joy’s law, first formulated by Bill in 1983, states that the peak computer speed doubles each year and thus is given by a simple function of time. Specifically,
S=2^{Y-1984}
in which S is the peak computer speed attained during year Y
Another statement attributed to Bill Joy is that most of the smartest people work for someone else.
His net worth is now estimated at $1 billion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Microsystems
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Joy
https://www.kleinerperkins.com/case-study/sun-microsystems/
Please mention SuperYachtFan when using this information.
He lives with his wife in Mill Valley, near San Francisco, USA. We believe he also owns an penthouse in New York.
He is the owner of the Royal Huisman sailing yacht ETHEREAL. The yacht was delivered in 2009.
We have not yet been able to identify his private jet. But please do send us a message if you have information about his business jet. The photos hereunder are just samples of some of the most successful private jets on the market.
(Photos by JetPhotos.com, Planespotters.net ; flightaware.com; flickr.com; picssr.com; planefinder.net ) Do you want us to remove a certain photo? Or credit a source? Please send us a message
SuperYacht Owners Database 3-2023
