Ugh. Repeated in this thread too.
> VMware, where he was an early investor;[4] and Arista, where he was cofounder and chief scientist. He has funded at least 20 companies.[5]
> He campaigned against Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) that was favored by telephone carriers, preferring Ethernet, which he saw as a simpler, proven option. Ethernet gradually superseded alternatives
Sure he's lucky with the 10B, but this guy is very clearly someone who knows what makes a successful company and understands which technological advances have a good likelihood of winning. It would be interesting to see the returns of his investments aside from Google but:
* VMWare: Early investor, the company would go on to be acquired for 625M by EMC before being spun out into IPO.
* Kealia: Founder of a company that got acquired by Sun. Deal undisclosed but probably $10-20M.
* Arista: Founder of a company that IPO'd at ~8B and is worth 44B now.
* Aster Data Systems: Investor & advisory board member acquired for $263M in 2011
* Tintri: Early investor, company IPO'ed at $220M before going bankrupt a year later & getting acquired for 60M (still would be a healthy exit for him)
At whatever point repeated luck is a signal of skill, this guy has heartily hurdled it as far as I'm concerned. Sure, maybe he wouldn't be a billionaire, but he'd still be fabulously wealthy and he keeps taking so many successful shots that if it wasn't Google it would probably be something else (not to mention someone like him was probably already getting well-compensated by Stanford).