Brad Fitzpatrick of LiveJournal

Bob Metcalfe of 3Com

Jamie Zawinski of Lucid and Netscape

One of the Sun founders. Probably Bill Joy, but it might be neat to see Vinod Khosla's POV too.

An early employee of Microsoft. Doesn't have to be Bill Gates, but someone who was there before the IBM deal.

Some founders whose startups failed - both in the early stages, before we've ever heard of them, and those who crashed spectactularly.

Zawinki's covered his Netscape time pretty extensively on his site.

One of the better sources for financial train wrecks is "When Giants Stumble" (http://www.amazon.com/When-Giants-Stumble-Business-Blunders/dp/0788199439 ), which is a bit dated (lots of retail/manufacturing/finance, not much technology) but thorough.

Skype founders. Someone from India (Reliance or Infosys). Just a couple to see the experience outside of the US as well.

Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank would be great. He started a microfinance bank and recently won a Nobel Peace prize for his work! That's not something many startups can claim. Possibly Iqbal Quadir of Grameen Phone too.

Also some European startups such as skype, last.fm, moo etc

Someone from the communications world. Chips, systems, etc.

Maybe the founders of cisco, qualcomm, juniper... The value and impact of these companies is significant, revolutionary.

Google, of course. I might also have been interested in Microsoft, just out of morbidity. Intel. Akamai.

I think in some ways, I'm more interested in the "mere mortals" in that they seem more realistic, more attainable somehow.

Trip Hawkins (EA, digital chocolate)

Tellme founders

Alex Welch (photobucket)