and he brought in his friend to be CFO. His buddy didn’t have an accounting
degree and he was really bad with numbers. He couldn’t think with numbers,
he couldn’t do a spreadsheet model accurately. That generated a lot of acrimony
at the board meetings. I would say, “Things are going badly.” And he’d
say, “Look at this beautiful spreadsheet. Look at these numbers; it’s going
great.” In 5 minutes I had found ten fundamental errors in the assumptions of
this spreadsheet, so I didn’t think it would be wise to use it to make business
decisions. But they couldn’t see it. None of the other people on the board were
engineers, so they thought, “Well, he’s the CFO, so let’s rely on his numbers.”
Having inaccurate numbers kept people from making good decisions.
They just thought I was a nasty and unpleasant person, criticizing this guy’s
numbers, because they couldn’t see the errors. From an MIT School of
Engineering standpoint, they were all innumerate.
Philip Greenspun 331
Livingston: What about your board?
Greenspun: We were supposed to have two outside board members to break
this kind of deadlock. They were subject to the venture capitalists’ approval,
and they wouldn’t approve anyone. I’d say, “What about this MIT professor?”
And they’d say, “No, he’s not qualified.” “What about this person who’s started
and run a $100 million company?” “Not qualified.” They never proposed anyone
themselves, and whoever I proposed, they shot down.
Basically, with their CEO that they brought in, they had a three-to-two
board majority no matter what. And they said, “We’re going to run this company.
We’re going to make all the decisions, and you’re just going to be a
figurehead.”
I got very upset. It was a difficult time for me. I didn’t have enough perspective
to realize . . . A couple of my friends, John Gage and Bill Joy, the
founders of Sun—I know John, and I don’t think he’d be upset if I told this
story—he would scream and yell about the direction that Sun was taking and
how bad it was, and Bill Joy would say, “C’mon, John, calm down, it’s only a
company.” Which is the right perspective to have, but I didn’t have that distance.
If I had been on the board of somebody else’s company and the same
kind of thing was going on, I could have probably contributed in a more positive
manner just by having less emotional stake in the matter.
Remember, I’d financed the company and I owned most of it, so it was a big
asset for me. It was my only asset, basically. It was just too personal. So after

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