3min chapter

#297: Bob Metcalfe — The Man (and Lessons) Behind Ethernet, Metcalfe’s Law, and More

The Tim Ferriss Show

notes

CHAPTER

The Three Things That Caused Companies to Fail

Andi learned the three things, in their opinion, that caused companies to fail. One was the uncontrollable ego of the founder. Two is a lack of focus and three was a lack of money. Andi: "This company succeeding is more important to me than running it" He says he had prepared for this moment by living on sand hill road.

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Transcript

Episode notes

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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