Bob Metcalfe

Dr. Robert M. Metcalfe joined Polaris Venture Partners in 2001 and is a general partner in the firm's Waltham office. Bob had three careers in technological innovation before becoming a venture capitalist: While an engineer-scientist (1965-1979), Bob helped pioneer the 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. Now, 35 years later, about 350 million new Ethernet ports are shipped annually. 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, sales, and marketing. While a publisher-pundit (1990-2000), Bob was CEO of IDG's InfoWorld Publishing Company (1992-1995). For eight years, he opined about the Internet in an InfoWorld column read weekly by half a million information technologists. Bob's books include Packet Communication, Beyond Calculation, and Internet Collapses.