Bob Metcalfe
Internet Pioneer;
General Partner, Polaris Ventures

Dr. Robert M. ("Bob") Metcalfe is a general partner at Polaris Ventures in Boston. Bob joined Polaris in January of 2001. He specializes in Boston area based information technology start-ups.

Bob had three careers before becoming a venture capitalist.

While an engineer-scientist (1965-1979), Bob helped build the early Internet. In 1973, at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, he invented Ethernet, the international local-area networking standard on which he shares four patents. From 1976 through 1983, he was consulting associate professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University.

While an entrepreneur-executive (1979-1990), Bob founded 3Com Corporation, the billion-dollar networking company where at various times he was Chairman, CEO, division general manager, and vice president of engineering, marketing, and sales.

While a publisher-pundit (1990-2000), Bob was CEO of IDG's InfoWorld Publishing Company (1992-1995). For eight years, he wrote an Internet column, "From the Ether," read weekly by 629,000 information technology professionals. He also wrote for American Spectator, Forbes, Technology Review, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired Magazine. He gave frequent speeches, appeared on radio and television, and hosted his own weekly webcast. He held entrepreneurship salons and produced conferences including ACM97, ACM1, Agenda, Pop!Tech, and Vortex.

Bob's book credits include Packet Communication (Thomson), Internet Collapses and Other InfoWorld Punditry (IDG Books), and Beyond Calculation: The Next Fifty Years of Computing (co-edited for Springer Verlag).

Boards:
Bob represents Polaris on the boards of directors of Avaki, Ember, Narad, and Nanosys. He also serves on the boards of Avistar Communications, Camden Technology Conference, IDC, IDG, Kelmscott Rare Breeds Foundation, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MediaLabEurope.

Education:
Bob graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969 with bachelor degrees in electrical engineering and in management. He received an MS in applied mathematics from Harvard University in 1970. In 1973, he received his PhD in computer science from Harvard, where his doctoral dissertation was titled, "Packet Communication."

Awards:
Among numerous awards, Bob received the Grace Murray Hopper Award in 1980 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, Bob was elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1996, he received the IEEE's Medal of Honor. In 1997, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. And in 1999, he was elected fellow of the International Engineering Consortium.