When it comes to high-flying superpowers of the tech industry, it doesn’t get much bigger than Sun Microsystems back in its heyday, while it was under the leadership of co-founder and former CEO Scott McNealy. So you can imagine that it was a bit of a culture shock for McNealy when he dove back into the scrappy world of startups a few years ago when he started working on his current company, the enterprise-focused social engagement platform Wayin.

We had the opportunity to sit down with McNealy this week at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas for a segment with TechCrunch TV, and we talked a bit about how he made the transition from corporate giant to startup and the lessons he’s learned along the way — both the serious ones, and the more humorous ones.

Of course, Scott McNealy is also known as one of the tech industry’s more outspoken characters, so there was lots more to talk about as well, from bridging the worlds of social and enterprise, to the future of education, the importance of open source, the role of tech founders in philanthropy, and more. Watch it all in the video embedded above.

Crunchbase

• WAYIN

Company: Wayin

Website: wayin.com

Launch Date: November 2010

Funding: $20.4M

Wayin, a Denver-based social engagement service. Founded in November 2010 by Sun Microsystems founder Scott McNealy and Scott Johnston, and led by CEO Tom Jessiman, Wayin is a mobile and online service that generates “one-to-many” conversations between individuals, brands, enterprises, schools and public sector agencies with their fans, customers, communities and citizens. It can be accessed online at http://www.wayin.com, by downloading the Wayin app for iPhone or Android, or integrated into a brand’s existing mobile app, on its website through...

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