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This Man created the ethernet that cable
you plug into your Wi-Fi boxes to gain
access to the internet so you can watch
this video and he did it while working a
9 to5 today we sit down with Bob medf a
Pioneer who transformed how we
communicate we learn what it takes to
invent a life-changing product we had to
kill two monopolies we had to kill AT&T
and we had to kill IBM in order to build
the internet the advice that Steve Jobs
gave him what kind of advice did he give
that anything surprising about what he
advised you on most people think that
Steve Jobs is the best CEO in the
history of the
world but an interesting fact about that
is that
he and whether the hard work and
sacrifice was all worth it in your
career do you have any regrets would you
change anything was it worth it
uh let's hear the story of the man who
revolutionized the
internet so jumping right into the
questions um how did you make your money
how would you answer that uh or how did
I make my money I invented something
then I started a company to
commercialize it and
succeeded and went public and sold some
stock now I have more money than I can
ever spend the thing I invented it's
called ethernet I invented it at Xerox
research in paloalto California on May
22nd
1973 I guess what I'm curious so you
made your money inventing something but
you invented it as an employee or were
you inventing it yes I did I invented it
as an employee of Xerox Corporation I'd
like to correct what I said by the way
I've uh I didn't make much money by
inventing ethernet I made most of it by
selling ethernet which is different and
uh now there one fed into the LED into
the other but it was the selling process
which took the time and the effort so
I've been to every remata in in the
world selling ethernet as an employe do
you think I'm going to get rich off this
or as you were creating it like hey this
just part of my job no I um I was
employed by Xerox they paid me well I
had a lot of fun there and invented this
thing and then left Xerox and returned
to ask to propose that they license me
the
patents and in fact license everyone the
patents in order to make ethered into an
industry standard we figured we'd have
to make it not a proprietary product of
Xerox Corporation and they agreed so uh
my company became one of hundreds to
license Ethernet from Xerox why'd you
leave I left xerx
twice and uh it had to do with career
considerations I was I had I was there
two segments of four years in research
for four years and development for four
years and uh I just got done
with just got done with what I was doing
and it was time to move on and then when
you're in Silicon Valley the you start
companies in when you're in Silicon
Valley you're supposed to start
companies so in 1979 I left Xerox with
the intention of pursuing
entrepreneurial interests and I had no
clue what it would be but a few months
later I started 3com how did you even
figure out how to start it I I was in
Silicon Valley surrounded by people who
knew how to start companies so uh I got
a lot of advice on VCS and and Steve
Jobs he called me in in uh I mentioned
him cuz he was one of my mentors an odd
Mentor situation since I'm 10 years
older than he was he called me in four
five days after I founded 3com and
invited me to join apple and I turned
him down and then he did a very
interesting thing he helped me for the
next 10 years all through the 80s to
build my company he in other words he
didn't get all all huffy and storm off
he was great why do you think he help it
I don't know I think he something about
entrepreneurship he liked that and uh he
could see that I I had just founded the
company a few days before so I guess he
was you know interested in that what
what would come of it plus I pitched him
I wanted to sell him a product so I came
to we had lunch on Stevens Creek
Boulevard in Cupertino California at a a
hippie
restaurant where everything was vegan
and uh I proposed that I would sell him
a network to this company had called
apple and they had these Apple twos so I
said you need a network and I here's the
I happen to have a design for a network
for you and I call it
Orchard you see the little marketing
flare there he he listened to that
proposition for about four
NCS before returning to the discussion
of my becoming a networking guy at Apple
he had no interest whatsoever in buying
Orchard I think maybe the the fact that
I tried to be a marketing person and
call it Orchard may have offended him
yeah what kind of advice did he give
that anything surprising about what he
advised you on verus what you were doing
I've come to realize this uh
retrospectively the key thing he taught
most people think that Steve Jobs is the
best CEO in the history of the
world but an interesting fact about that
is that he founded Apple in 1976 and he
became CEO in
1996 and so what he did what in Silicon
Valley is uh he appreciated adult
supervision that's the term adult
supervision so from the very beginning
he had people involved in his company
who were at with him for him so I did
that so I as soon as I raised Venture
Capital went out and recruited Bill
Krauss to come and be our CEO I didn't
know how to run a company let alone
start a company yeah I I I think the two
things you said that really really
resonate with was one is selling not
inventing like anyone can invent but
actually get people to buy and make it a
business to selling yeah and I just had
this realization over and over is that
it's it's very hard to be successful
alone mm right like you did have to
Steve found people to support him in
different areas you found sounds like
this Bob cross guy when you what made
you think to start this business over
other things and like did you expect it
to be as big as it got or what was the
expectation for you well as a grad
student so I graduated from MIT in
electrical engineering and management
1969 I went to Harvard immediately hated
Harvard but the project that was funded
at AR at both Harvard and MIT was a
thing called the arpa computer network
named after the advanced research
projects agency of the Department of
Defense
arpa and a wise graduate student will
choose a field where there's money
because that will fund the PHD research
that you do and so that I got into
networking right then and so then I was
in networking for four years with Mi I
worked at Mi it but got my degrees from
Harvard and then I spent eight years at
Xerox building an internet inside of
Xerox so then when I left Xerox in 79 to
start my own company what what company
was I going to start or had to have
something to do with all that and it did
so the company was called 3com computer
communication
compatibility and our goal was to
network um diverse computers together
and most people forget this but prior to
the internet every computer manufacturer
made their own networking if they made
any networking at all they were all
incompatible so the 3com was founded to
solve that problem
and uh we were the first company to ship
TCP IP which is the uh Court protocol of
the internet and we were the first ones
to ship a commercial version of that and
and we did ethernet and we adopted Unix
and Ms Doss and off we went what did you
expect 3com to become 3com yeah it
started Life as a uh consulting
company immediately profitable I hired
recruited a dozen people and we did
Consulting on networking and we were uh
profitable and we all had company cars I
had a Mercedes and but then we noticed
that um other people were starting
silicon classic Silicon Valley startups
with venture capital and one of them was
unerman Vass which you've never heard of
but Ralph ungerman and Char bass and I
discussed starting a company together
but our egos were too big so we started
two separate companies and then he
raised venture capital and then he
started bragging about having invented
all the stuff that I
invented so it annoyed me so then I put
together a business plan in in September
of 1980 and began raising money and in
in February of the next year I raised
$1.1 million for a third of of the
company which are these are laughable
numbers to yeah how much did that third
go on to be at its peak you think say
again how how much did that third go on
to be at its peak it's kind of funny
remember you don't remember the internet
bubble you probably weren't born yet
right at the I was in high school but
there were a lot of super valuable
companies and mine was among them and
for a few nanoseconds in 1999 with 5.7
billion in
Revenue U and I had left the company I
wasn't there
it was worth $ 52 billion inflation
adjusted but only for a few NCS you if
you look at the graph it
goes like
this and I didn't even get half of that
$ 52
billion that was wild that was much
later I left three years later than I
should have I left after 13 years and I
realized the last three of those years I
was hurting the company rather than
helping it I was in the end I was VP of
corporate
marketing and my principal activity was
arguing with our regional managers over
advertising they all wanted to have
their own ads write their own copy
choose their own logos their own colors
everything and I was the corporate um
brand Nazi and I had traveled around the
world convincing French people that they
should use our brand you know our logo
here's the here's the artwork for our
logo you should use this
and that was uh not work that I was
uniquely qualified to do but I did know
the difference between sales and
marketing and that's that's one thing
you need to learn early what's that well
many there are many many differences
there not the same thing most people
think sales and marketing are the same
thing but marketing has most is mostly
uh incoming and sales is mostly outgoing
two things I'm curious for there is like
how did you figure out was time to go I
think for a lot of people especially
you're starting a company you're like am
I quitting too soon in it have I stayed
too long in it yes how did you know that
all right so in uh
1980 uh two I convened a meeting of the
board of directors of which I was the
chairman and a large shareholder to
decide who is going to be the CEO and we
decided Bill KRA was going to be the CEO
and I was not going to be so that was
the first time my board rejected me and
then 10 years later I came back as
similar this is how I left uh three of
us were designated as Su succession
candidates and uh and I was surprisingly
I was one of the three I was running the
biggest Revenue generator of the company
the hardware
division all those other guys like
software and but I generated all the
profits but I didn't win Eric won so
twice my board of directors chose
somebody else uh to run the to be CEO of
the company and both times they were
right in in uh the way it played out
there two very good choices were made
and I'm not surprised because I built
that board I recruited those board
members one by one uh so I guess I was
proud of the board and it one of the
important functions of a board is to
um tell you the
truth self-awareness is so
hard very rarely to someone say you know
I really can't do this job anymore I
don't have the skills and plus I'm
getting tired no one never does that you
have to fire their asses and that's the
purpose of the board is to fire your ass
when uh when you're uh no longer good
you need to be firing on all cylinders
it's the job of the board to be sure the
big cylinder is firing correctly so
twice a board that I recruited chose
somebody else to be the CEO and it
worked and both times I I can attest
they were
right uh Bill Krauss the first time and
Eric benamu the second time and the
company went like a rocket ship after
each of them took over so it was great
did people treat you differently before
and after 3on before and after you made
you earned money yeah yeah I became
famous and I I had to develop tests for
you know that goes to your head I
watched I watched as little as
$100,000 going to one of our Engineers I
watch it ruin his
life just a 100 thousand so not not
Millions just 100,
so I began as I got richer over time
trying to figure out how not to get uh
corrupted by it and here's there here's
a simple example a simple rule if
there's a bunch of you standing around
and everyone's introducing hi Tom hi
Noah good see Noah and that all finishes
if you haven't said your name during
that introduction period you need an ego
fix right there cuz you assume that
everyone knows who you are so that's a
little test I perform I watch did you
say your name or do you assume that
people uh know who you are cuz you're so
important yeah yeah it's very easy uh to
be corrupted by money as and as I said I
remember this kid
Sunny engineer 100
Grand
drugs
disappeared and it was just 100K that
got
him a sad story so uh yeah you have to
guard I think you have if if you're
going to be successful and you start
succeeding then you have to start paying
attention to succeeding
well Bill Gates actually Bill Gates who
I admire greatly even though I
frequently criticize him uh he once said
a wise thing was it would be harder for
him to give away his money well than it
was to make
it he's doing a damn good job of giving
it away right now I
think by the way he and I are not close
I when I was a
columnist uh I attacked Microsoft for um
Andy trust Behavior andic competitive
behavior and Bill and I had a falling
out at that time in your do you have any
regrets would you change anything was it
worth it it worked out so well for me my
life is so good I am reluctant to answer
any questions about the past and
changing it or regretting it
cuz it's just hard to imagine it working
out better but uh a partial answer to
that question is I wish I had learned
how to sell
earlier so I was forced into the job of
head of sales and marketing as we were
running out of cash in 19 1982 so we
were heading toward uh
fume and uh I got replaced as CEO
and given the job of head of sales and
marketing with zero
revenue and uh so I grew revenue from
zero to a million a month in two years
and then we went public so that was my
contribution but had I been better at
selling before that uh life would have
been easier for example IBM gave me two
chances they paid me two grand each time
to come to IBM and convince them to use
ethernet and uh I didn't do any research
I didn't unearth their considerations I
didn't know who the decision maker was I
didn't know I didn't know anything I
just want and gave a speech twice once
in Franklin L Lakes New Jersey and once
in Research Triangle Park North Carolina
and I was great I won the argument but
as you know from selling you can win the
argument but lose the sale and that's
what I did I didn't ask for the order
for example I just gave my speech about
how cool Le it was then I IBM went off
and did a a a competing technology which
it took me couple couple of decades to
kill we had to kill two monopolies we
had to kill AT&T and we had to kill IBM
in order to build the internet kill the
monopolies of those two
companies so show the competition no was
there anyone close to like killing you
guys or you're like oh my God like this
oh Cisco is the one that got away so
Cisco was founded the year we went
public uh we had an we had an observer
on our
board when we went public he left our
board and founded
Cisco and then
Cisco passed us after a while maybe 10
years
later they were the one that got away
and so Cisco still exists obviously and
they're big successful and 3com is now
part of HP is there other
recommendations where to learn sales it
turns out when I worked for Xerox part
of Xerox it was big Monopoly very
profitable company it had uh development
for its employees so I took a course
called Xerox selling
skills at this course uh there's you can
buy it today it exists today but there's
lots of books about
selling so xero selling skills was
the and then I took the course at Xerox
had a university in its own University
sales for not sales training for
training in general so I took managing
tasks through people
and I took Xerox selling skills at Xerox
not at MIT not at Harvard not at
Stanford at zerox for someone starting
out in their career um or things you
wish have known and sounds like one of
them is selling selling is what are
there other things you would for your
kids or you know people let's go back to
selling there's many kinds of selling so
there's being VP of sales and marketing
and knowing the diff knowing the
difference between sales and marketing
for example spal and then there's being
a sales manager but then there's being a
salesperson but then there's selling
yourself in a job interview or so
selling is a very big word and uh my
regret is I didn't know that earlier I
would have uh been uh a simpler
life is that better or worse I'm sure it
could have been
better going with
that I think if I had been able to
convince IBM to use ethernet my life
would have been easier as I spent the
next Imagine going to work every day
with your wife and your board of
directors and your customers all telling
you that your invention and your
principal product is going to be killed
shortly by
IBM every day and then 10 years goes by
and the
numbers oh look at that we
sold a million of them we made a card in
in 19 uh September of 82 we shipped a
card the first you plug it into your IBM
PC and it puts the IBM PC on the
internet on the ethernet and thereby on
the
internet and we uh we started selling
those cards for about $1,000
each and uh I remember we started
selling hundreds per
month whoa would take a hundred multipli
by a thousand that's pretty good A
couple years later we were selling a
million a
month and uh that's when the company
became a multi-billion dollar company
after the company went public how did
money improve your life well before we
went
public I had a round of Finance it's
complicated how it happened but in short
I went to every employee there was
roughly 35 employees with a yellow graph
pad and I wrote their name and I asked
them how many shares of the company
would they like to buy if they could of
course it's very it's very unusual usual
for employees to buy at that early stage
but all 35 of them went back to their
families and they came back with a
number the number of shares they wanted
to buy from me
personally and so I uh I was able to
sell
$250,000 worth of stock to so every
employee had all the stock that they
could afford and by the way the big
buyer was our receptionist she
syndicated so so I had 250 $1,000 and I
went and deposit at the Bank of America
and then I went to the
ATM in Stanford Shopping Center yeah
where I live quite near there and uh
went to the ATM and withdrew $500 just
to see if it would work you know like is
the money actually
there that's sort of a comment on how
unaccustomed I was to having money is I
wanted to prove that I actually had it
and there it was
uh so we bought a big house
and had got marri had I was married
already but we had
children
uh and I bought a
Corvette Summer House in
Maine we go to Maine every summer
now I have a boat I've had it for 20
some years her name is enthusiasm and
bought her she's a great
vot um but I have I we've taken care of
our kid going back to the you know money
the the kids are now taken care of we've
set up trust funds for them modest and
now our goal is to spend all of our
money before we die and the big problem
is we don't know exactly when we're
going to die so that's the problem well
we could arrange it we could set a date
certain and then just spend our money on
until we ran out on that date certain uh
we could do that
[Laughter]
uh um and we're we make big donations to
various things my my specialty is
professorships at MIT I'm in the process
of end I have just finished endowing the
third so there's three professors at MIT
who are endowed by
me and I like to do it now but while I'm
still alive a lot too many people don't
money after they die that's no fun at
all yeah but I I got three professors at
MIT and I call them up they answer and
when I ask them what they're doing they
tell me and it's great to find out and
it's it's I'm a trustee of MIT so I
continue to be involved there and having
my three professors by the way they're
not my professors but they do occupy and
endowment over which I have no say
whatsoever do do you remember your first
salary after you graduated I do remember
my sophomore
year I had started work and I was a a
programmer and uh I hadn't gotten into
Hardware quite yet so I was still in
software and uh my dad who was a gyro
who was a gyroscope technician in the
Aerospace industry on Long Island saw my
pasta and I was making more money than
him and his reaction was funny he was
happy happy he had succeeded other words
one of his goals was to launch his
family and his son was now making more
money than he was and that was my
sophomore year
1966 what's the silliest thing you spent
on it the silliest thing personally yeah
well I almost killed myself with a fast
boat I bought a 50 knot boat and in
Maine there are very few sandb bars it's
all Granite that comes to the surface
and I always hit one at 50 knots and if
you hit a granite ledge at 50 knots your
boat virtually
explodes and I managed to at the last
minute so he sold that boat immediately
after I almost killed
everybody uh I had to get better at
navigation I got better at navigation
what got invented was the GPS this was
preg GPS so I was using you know this
kind of navigation and I didn't see the
yeah and I didn't see the rock there so
I'm whizzing 50 knots Bam Bam Bam and
then the water looked funny
it just looked funny so I powered down
swerved to the right and I could see the
as the boat turned I could see the rocks
of the
water that was a silly purch going to
your question that was a silly purchase
so I my current boat cruises at 12 knots
which is plenty what's been the best
things you spent money on well our kids
went to good schools that was the best
investment uh we were uh we were living
in silic Sil Valley and our kids were
attending very good Tony Silicon Valley
schools and one day we realized as I'm
dropping the kids off that all the other
people dropping the kids off at this
school were
blonde uh uh Child Care Professionals in
German vehicles and I'm online with my
old Mercedes and the kids and we decided
that we didn't want to raise our kids in
that environment with all the nannies
involved and catered birthday parties
and all that stuff so we moved to rural
Maine that may have been a silly thing
to do
well U because the schools in rural
Maine were terrible so that backfired so
then we started going to private schools
in Maine and then finally we moved to
Boston and and sent our kids to prep
schools in the Boston area that was
money very well spent I was thinking
about how you showed your dad your pay
St for one your kids show you one day
their pay St well my um daughter went to
the University of Southern California
after um prep school and then uh she
went to work for Facebook and she worked
there for eight years there's a funny
coincidence in our family and that's one
of the four she worked at Facebook for
eight years then she left and now she
has she started her own little company
our son went to Boston
University and then went to Apple and he
worked at Apple for eight years and then
he left after 8 years and now he's in
business with our daughter my wife it
turns out when she graduated from
Michigan she went to work for Sunset
magazine in Meno Park California where
she worked for eight years I after
graduating from the Harvard University
and MIT went to work at Xerox for eight
years so there's a pattern there in our
family yeah it's like it's like at it's
like post it's a post
post or a graduate school eight years
and then you're ready to go off and do
business what kind of business are your
kids starting so they're working
together on on a new company yeah they
do it's it's called The Working team
it's the two of them and they do MVPs so
people want to start companies they go
in and Julia is the chief product
officer and he's the coder and they go
into a small company and they develop
the MBP with the by the way it's
different in every case but it's uh in
short they team up with the company to
do the MVP they get offered equity and
they agonize about whether to take
Equity whether to take cash and the
first few Deals they took equity and now
they wanted now they're realizing that
they would like some cash too so they're
looking for mixed
packages and uh and it's kind of fun
every once in a while one of them will
call me up for advice how did you check
your ego explore your career in life
after WS after 3com how did you do how
did you check your ego cuz like I know
for me with Sumo and I've had it in the
past we like am I the CEO I'm the
founder who am I now and and then also
how to explore you know where to take
your career afterwards so I left 3om uh
when Eric uh took over as CEO it's it's
good practice for people who might
conflict with his authority to leave the
company so I left to get out of the way
I was still the founder of the company
and Eric did Fabulous work so the so
then I became a journalist and I wrote a
we Calum for a million
people and uh that was really fun and
then after that I became a venture
capitalist for 10 years and that was
really fun and then I became a professor
for 10 years 11 years and that was fun
and now I'm looking for my next 10year
gig how'd you figure out these careers
how' you figure out what to do oh it was
like a it was like an attempted docking
you know you just try to dock with very
various opportunities and then one of
them clicks and locks in so the there's
no one thing I'm pretty sure of is I've
gone to meta I mean I was an engineer an
engineering manager division
manager
CEO journalist venture
capitalist I am I Am So Meta now so I
want to go I'm pretty sure I want my
next game to be less meta so to I don't
want to be Professor again but I would I
do am interested in doing research so
maybe doing being a non-press
professorial researcher might be you can
give a fourth chair for
yourself
yeah you can do that actually I'm sure
they have ways of taking money there yes
they're very resourceful and taking your
money but I'm not going to do that what
are your most proud of moments of your
career uh going from zero to a million
dollars a month as head of
sales during that time I had to figure
out how to sell I had recruit a sales
team and uh we U we did it and if you
want a full summary of the best
takeaways from this conversation I have
with Bob metcafe then click the link
down below to get access to it now if
you like this video you are going to
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talk to five millionaires over the age
of 80 and ask them if the money was
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Noah loves you and I'll see you out
there PE pew

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