"Ethernet and Entrepreneurship" — Robert M. Metcalfe

Robert M. Metcalfe Photo by Al Santos.

Dr. Robert M. Metcalfe is a high-tech venture capitalist at Polaris Venture Partners in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Dr. Metcalfe is a director of Avistar, IDC, IDG, Massachusetts Software Council, Metro Ethernet Forum, MIT, Pop!Tech, St. Mark's School, and MIT's Technology Review Magazine. He serves on the boards of Polaris portfolio companies Ember, Narad, Paratek, and SiCortex. He is chairman of Ember, Paratek, and SiCortex.

Dr. Metcalfe had three careers before becoming a venture capitalist:

While an engineer-scientist (1965-1979), Dr. Metcalfe helped build the early Internet. In 1973, at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, he invented Ethernet, the local-area networking (LAN) standard on which he shares four patents. During 2004, more than 200 million new Ethernet ports were shipped.

While an entrepreneur-executive (1979-1990), Dr. Metcalfe founded 3Com Corporation, the billion-dollar networking company where at various times he was Chairman, CEO, division general manager (GM) of software, GM netstations, GM hardware, VP engineering, VP sales, and VP marketing.

While a publisher-pundit (1990-2000), Dr. Metcalfe was CEO of IDG's InfoWorld Publishing Company (1992-1995). For eight years, he wrote an Internet column read weekly by more than 500,000 information technologists. He spoke often; appeared on radio, television, and the web; and produced conferences including ACM97, ACM1, Agenda, Pop!Tech, and Vortex. His books include Packet Communication, Beyond Calculation, and Internet Collapses.

In 1980, Dr. Metcalfe received the Grace Murray Hopper Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). In 1988, he received the Alexander Graham Bell Medal from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). In 1995, Dr. Metcalfe received the Exploratorium Award for Public Understanding of Science and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1996, he received the IEEE Medal of Honor. In 1997, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. In 1999, he was elected to the International Engineering Consortium. In 2003, Dr. Metcalfe won the Marconi Prize and was inducted into the prestigious Bay Shore High School Hall of Fame. In 2005, he received the National Medal of Technology from President Bush. Metcalfe is especially proud of his four honorary doctorates, from DePaul University, University of Maine, Bay Path College, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. 

Dr. Metcalfe was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1946. In 1964, he graduated from Bay Shore (Long Island) High School. In 1969, he graduated from MIT with two bachelors degrees, in electrical engineering and in industrial management. He received a Masters degree in applied mathematics from Harvard in 1970. His 1973 Harvard Ph.D. dissertation was entitled Packet Communication.