I wouldn't say "smart". Maybe "lucky" is a good word. There was an opening caused by Sun and other commercial UNIX provides shooting themselves in the foot, and he grabbed onto the hole. Not only did they fill the gap, they managed to convince (brainwash?) the vast majority of people that they can't live without it. I don't know how they got a company started on DOS and Windows 3.1, though, since those were the most horrible OS's ever made, even compared to the alternatives at the time..