Eric Smidt is the executive chaiman of Google. Schmidt started working at Sun Microsystems in 1983 as its first software manager. In a 14 year career he became president of Sun Technology Enterprises. In April 1997, he became CEO and chairman of the board of Novell. Schmidt left Novell after Novell acquired Cambridge Technology Partners. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin interviewed Schmidt. Impressed by him they recruited Schmidt to run their company in 2001 under the guidance of venture capitalists John Doerr and Michael Moritz. Upon being hired at Google, Eric Schmidt was paid a salary of $250,000, and an annual performance bonus. He was granted 14,331,703 shares of class B common stock at 30 cents per share, and 426,892 shares of Series C preferred stock at purchase price of $2.34. Schmidt and the Google founders agreed to a base salary of $1 in 2004 (which continued through 2010). Schmidt is one of the few people who became billionaires based on stock options received as an employee in a corporation of which he was neither the founder nor a relative of the founder. In 2012 Forbes estimated the net worth of Eric Schmidt at USD 7.5 billion. Google gave him $100 million in 2011 as a parting gift, when he left as CEO en became executive chairman. Schmidt purchased the Lurssen yacht Oasis in 2009 for USD 72 million.