Founders: Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy, Andy Bechtolsheim, and Bill Joy
Named after the Stanford University Network, Sun Microsystems became the goliath of computer workstations in the 1990s, so much so it once used the slogan, "We're the dot in dot-com." But the end of the dotcom boom meant the shuttering of many businesses that relied on Sun's technologies; the company ultimately was acquired by Oracle for nearly $7.3 billion. Its co-founders, all household names in tech, have had rich second acts. Kholsa became a general partner at Kleiner Perkins before starting his own venture firm, Khosla Ventures. Joy and Bechtolsheim are investors (Bechtolsheim was one of the earliest backers of Google), and McNealy co-founded social-media polling company Wayin.