The Maverick Journey of Scott McNealy

Scott McNealy, former chairman and CEO of Sun Microsystems, is a name synonymous with bold innovation, fearless leadership, and unapologetic candor. In this conversation with Hal Rosenbluth, McNealy reflects on his extraordinary career, sharing insights on business, leadership, and his unwavering commitment to the principles of personal responsibility and limited government.

Interview

Hal:
Welcome. My name is Hal Rosenbluth and I hope you enjoy this episode of Making Waves. Today’s guest is Scott McNealy. Someone who I have admired for many decades. Scott is the most self-deprecating maverick-type fighter— highly successful—most combative, and strategic thinker I know, and the former chairman and CEO of Sun Microsystems, which he sold back in 2010 to Oracle, and is currently, amongst many other things, Chairman of Curriki [an online education service] So Scott, welcome. Good to see you, buddy.

Scott:
Good to see you. It’s been a long time. You’re looking very fit.

Hal:
Thank you, it’s probably my diabetes medicine.

Scott:
There you go. Better living through chemicals, I say.

Hal:
Yeah, exactly. Before we start, anything you want to say, Scott?

Scott:
I know, but you’re my hero. You have done multiple startups. It’s hard to do more than one and have more than one success because the first one anybody can get lucky and I got pretty lucky with mine and I haven’t been as successful with other efforts but you’ve done a whole bunch and you made me a lot of money over time too so I appreciate that. You’re one of my heroes.

Hal:
My pleasure. Scott, nothing that I’ve observed ever intimidates you, whether it be in business, in sports, you’re highly competitive, you’ve taken on some of the industry’s most well-known and successful CEOs. regardless of the circumstance, how did you get that way where you basically have no fear and no fear of saying what you want? As far as I’m concerned, you’re like the Howard Cosell of business. You tell it like it is and then, you know, feel strong about your convictions.

Scott:
I don’t know. I was actually pretty shy growing up, but as I started working and finally got out of school, I just loved working. I loved working 60, 70, 80 hours a week. And I learned to go to bed at night saying I gave it everything I did. Those are all cliches, but I tried to get as much done every day as possible. And I went to bed going,

You know what? You did just about everything you could do today. And you made some mistakes, whatever, but those were effort mistakes. They weren’t lazy or, you know, not paying attention mistakes. And I always considered it a great day when I could go to bed and say, I really did it as hard and as long as I could. And the other thing I learned is that I don’t have a great memory. So telling a lie is hard to keep track of. And life is much better when you just tell the truth.

And so when somebody says, how you doing today? I’ll say, it sucks. kind of, I’m not going to say, great when I’m not doing great…At this stage in the world today, where do you go to get truth? I mean, people don’t even trust their own eyes, their own ears. They will see something and be told that something else happened and they will believe what they’re being told as opposed to what they’ve actually seen…

I tell my four boys, if there’s anything that shows up on the other side of a piece of glass or a speaker or whatever, you cannot trust it. There’s just, you have no verification. What you see with your own eyes is about the only thing. What you hear with your own ears, what you touch with your own hands, what you experience personally are the only things you can truly trust and believe. And so there’s a lot of people who…spend a lot of time with me because I’m at least willing to give them a better reality.

Hal:
But you know, my impression, and I could be wrong, so tell me that you’re kind of most comfortable and kind of a natural recluse, but at the same time, you’re very much, you know, invited to be on major television shows and so on and so forth, whether it be political or financial or what have you. How do you reconcile those two, if I’m correct?

Scott:
I’m very quiet, very reserved. My high school yearbook says back in 1972, Scott won a wealth of friends with his shy and unassuming manner. And people go, what do you mean shy and unassuming? And that really is the way I am and I’m hardwired that way.

I’m sitting here on a ranch hiding from reality and it’s so great to just be on the land, working the land, and doing something that’s real. Not doing digital searches with AI algorithms, creating some sort of false reality. It’s a very, very nice thing.

But when I became CEO at Sun, all of a sudden I had all these people relying me. I couldn’t be unassuming. I couldn’t be shy. I couldn’t be a recluse. It was my job to out-advertise IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and Microsoft, who had massive advertising budgets, and I had to do it through just force of personality.

Brash was my middle name, and I was the quip-meister. I did

Top 10 lists, know, Top 10 signs….you know, the Microsoft hairball will blow up on you. Or, you know, I would do all of these things because that would get the media to write about it. They were horrible writers. So I gave them lots of great content and became very controversial. And, you know, I talked about bomber and butthead. I talked about HP merging with I think it was compact at the time. can’t remember. And I called it slow motion collision of two garbage trucks. And, you know, I called another company big hat, no cattle, and you know those kinds of things just be, you know, they were quips that got us a lot of notoriety and got us into the conversation without having to pay for anything.

Hal:
Smart. Running a big company like a small one, which is using the resources that you know you have and are good at that, you know, others may have, you know, ones that they use to their advantage. So I’ve always gotten a laugh out of everything you’ve said. They’re all true–but, they’re humorous.

How do you deal with people that don’t have a sense of humor?

Scott:
Well, see, I grew up playing ice hockey and baseball and golf and all the rest of it and needling and, you know, the psych games and all the rest of it were just a part of the thing. Hey, batter, batter, batter, swing. You you do that in business and or, know, you know, the if the media [isn’t] on your side and you call somebody a moron, even though they said one of the most moronic things, all of a sudden it becomes clear you know, somebody’s going to get all bummed out and, give me a break. You know, I actually took the sticks and stones saying a long time ago, pretty seriously. Names—they don’t hurt you. I want people to know I’m there and do your best. Let’s hear your best quip. Let’s, also let’s back it up with some reality…

Hockey taught me that. You know, we used to howl at some of the really great lines and we would actually congratulate the opponent if they came up with a really funny one. And we all had nicknames. One of defensemen on our hockey team was named Pylon because the other team could go around him and that was just his nickname. Nobody got upset about it.

Hal:
Exactly. That’s always been endearing to me and it’s something that I share strongly.

Scott:
But I’m not mean. I’m not, you know, it’s a question of, you know, if you can’t kid your buddy, you give your best buddy more grief than you’d give any stranger in the world. And that’s just a sign of affection. It’s a sign, I trust you, I like you, and I can point out your faults, you can point out my faults, and everybody’s cool with that. But that’s a world that’s not allowed anymore.

Hal:
I know. but you know, we’ve got to do our best to bring it back and give other people the courage to do what you do. Cause they simply don’t have courage and people are afraid to talk. They’re afraid to share.

Scott:
So… for all you viewers— I’ve always thought of [Hal] as a cross between Fred Flintstone and Eeyore, and in the most positive ways. And if you ever get to spend some time with him, you will see that’s pretty accurate.

Hal:
No, it is. When we started the in-pharmacy clinic industry, my partner, his nickname for me was Eeyore.

Scott:
Was it really? So I’m not the first one to call you out on that,

Hal:
Well, you’re the first one to actually recognize it. He, he was poo. He had everything was, you know, we had Tigger and everybody else. Not a whole lot different than what was going on with your hockey buddies and so on and so forth. But that was at a time in business where you could say whatever the hell you wanted to say. And you know, you’re not going to, you know, get, get, get caught up on everything. and hopefully we can go back to those times.

Hal:
Scott, I think you’re self-proclaimed libertarian, which I also relate to. But how do you define a libertarian?

Scott:
My definition of a libertarian, and I would have to say the people who put our original constitution up were that way. They were about personal responsibility, about self-governance, about very, very, very small government. The scope of government should absolutely be nothing more than protecting your rights, liberties, freedoms, and privileges. And nothing more.

It shouldn’t be about redistributing wealth. It shouldn’t be about a safety net. It shouldn’t be about any of those things. It should only be protecting your assets, your rights, your safety, your ability to pursue the dumbest ideas you want or the best of ideas that you want. And they shouldn’t be in commerce. shouldn’t be doing…

Government by definition is a monopoly. Monopolies by definition are corrupt, inefficient, high priced and did I mention corrupt. And so you try to do as little as possible in the government sector, defending your border, defending you against a crazy man or somebody who’s trying to take your stuff, it’s called personal safety, those sorts of things, having a fair and honest and balanced judicial system, those are things that you can’t send out to private enterprise. But everything else should be in private enterprise. And whenever I’ve definition of libertarian, the only time the government steps into the private sector is when you have monopoly power. And that happens very seldom. And at that point, you don’t arrest Bill Gates, you just break his company up and give the current shareholders pieces of all the broken up companies and you tell them start all over. See if you can establish monopoly power again because that’s all driving innovation and being powerful. But you don’t arrest them. You don’t arrest somebody for winning the dog race. You don’t shoot the dog. You don’t shoot Secretariat after it wins the Triple Crown. You start the race all over again and let everybody compete again. And right now, let me give you some interesting statistics.

When I was born, the federal budget was $70 billion and it was working just fine. Now it’s over $7 trillion. Think about gas being $19.9 when I was a kid, when I first started driving. That’s cents. For those of you who don’t know what cents are, it’s a penny …100 pennies makes a dollar.

And by the way, do know what a trillion is? I don’t. But we’re spending over seven of them and printing trillions. People don’t know. I can’t even fathom what a trillion dollars is. But gas was 20 cents a gallon in the last 60 years with all the advances in exploration, extraction, refinement and distribution.

Gas should be a nickel. That’s five pennies for those of you who don’t know what a nickel is. Instead, it’s five bucks. And why is that? Government, overreach government. It’s taxes, it’s regulation, and it is, most importantly, the devaluing of the value of a dollar through inflation, printing the money to Fed, which is like the worst thing that ever happened.

Now imagine the cost of living if energy was a nickel, a gallon. Imagine the productivity, the cost of living, the value of your dollar, all of those sorts of things if we hadn’t let the government go freaking berserk and be as corrupt as corrupt can be. We don’t, we aren’t a banana republic. We are a, I don’t even know. There’s no analogy for it because we’ve never had, people say, well, the next election will fix it.

Name one $7.4 trillion government that’s ever been voted out of power. Ever. It ain’t happening. So that’s my definition of a libertarian. Fire them all. Defund them all. Get them back to protecting our rights, liberties, and everybody. I want them to protect everybody. And when somebody steps across the line and infringes on somebody else’s rights, liberties, freedoms, or privileges, off to jail.

I don’t know how you argue with that. I don’t know how you argue with that. I’ll tell you what, private philanthropy is so much more effective than government redistribution. It’s so much more fair. I’ll also tell you that I’ve turned very against dot orgs.

The real problem with these dot orgs is this is the money laundering capital of the world dot orgs. Start with a Clinton Global Initiative and then look at all the act blues and this, that, and the other thing. They are all corrupt and every check written by a dot org should be published on the internet, on the blockchain, and every check given to them should be

printed immediately on so we can see exactly who’s paying to give money to whom. And that would give you a very good idea. So you’ll see where the money is being laundered. Then we also should do that with our government. Every check the government writes should be put on the internet for anybody to search and sort and analyze who wrote it, who signed it, who authorized it, how much and who got it.

And if we put all of that, wouldn’t it be interesting to see where the $7.4 trillion went?

Hal:  Yeah, no, you’re totally onto something and I hope that people pick up on that thought and, you know, we can start to do something about it.

Scott:
It will never happen. Like I said, $7.4 trillion powerhouse will never give up control at the ballot box because they own the ballot box,

Hal:
I agree, it’s never gonna happen, but you know what? Still, I think it’s important for people like you to say things like that, because they don’t even give it any thought…how many people are sitting around thinking about, this .org that I just donated whatever to, it’s actually not going anywhere other than somebody else’s pockets or, yeah.

Scott:
So I got a question for you. You want to solve cancer. You got $100 million you want to give away. Do you give it to the Cancer Society or do you give it to $10 million to 10 startup entrepreneurs who want to cure cancer? Which do you think has a higher chance that with that $100 million, where will it go and be more effective? And it’ll go to the 10. It’s not even close. It’s not even close.

I’m just, call me a raging capitalist, I am. And I think it’s done more good for more people and it’s an efficient allocation of resources.

Hal:
Scott, this has been fun. I’m not sure that these things typically are fun, but talking with you and it’s just been a pleasure and I can’t thank you enough for doing this.

Scott:
Well, I appreciate your time and all that you do. I’m spending all my time, as an investor and an advisor and a coach and my, you know, I can’t help my, my son Maverick, he plays golf better than I can. And, he’s in the top 20 right now as we speak at the golf tournament down in Mississippi, he’s got his younger brother, caddy. I got fired as his caddy a long time ago. you know, Dakota’s writing code for the factory to car network for Ford with his Stanford computer science stuff. And Colt is my third son has started a software company and I’m chairman emeritus on that. couldn’t have more fun doing that, but it’s all about doing things out of the government sector to being in the private sector and making a difference and providing value. So I appreciate you because you’re one of the, one of the great raging capitalists and successful ones at that. And just about everything you touch turns to gold.

Hal:
You’re too kind and you and Susan raised four wonderful, wonderful boys.

Scott:
Absolutely, absolutely. I can’t wait to be the grumpy grandpa.

Hal:
Yeah, right. that’s not hard to do.