#297: Bob Metcalfe — The Man (and Lessons) Behind Ethernet, Metcalfe’s Law, and More
The Tim Ferriss Show
Harvard PhD Thesis - The Hard Call
"I invented ethernet. And in the course of inventing ethernet, i wrote a chapter of my thesis that satisfied horror that mythe was sufficiently novel that i could graduate," he says. "That was only the tenth thing that caused me to hate harvard was a pretty big one." He also talks about his time at zeroc pala paawalto research center and how it made him want to kill himself.
Bob Metcalfe (@BobMetcalfe) is an MIT-Harvard-trained engineer-entrepreneur who became an Internet pioneer in 1970, invented Ethernet in 1973, and founded 3Com Corporation in 1979. About 1.2B Ethernet ports were shipped last year — 400M wired and 800M wireless (Wi-Fi).
3Com went public in 1984, peaked at $5.7B in annual sales in 1999, and after 30 years became part of HP last year. Bob was a publisher-pundit for IDG-InfoWorld for about 10 years and a venture capitalist for about 10 years with Polaris Venture Partners, where he continues as a Venture Partner.
Bob is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a recipient of the National Medal of Technology.
In this conversation, we talk about everything from how he toasts when drinking with friends, how he learned to recruit and fire, what he does to scale businesses, different approaches to talent evaluation, critical decisions and mistakes made, how he has gotten through dark times, and much more. Please enjoy!
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