Bob Metcalfe wins Turing Award
Bob has been an active member of the Austin startup community for 10+ years and I've talked with him many times. As a EE, it was cool meeting him the first time and once I'd chatted with him a few times, I finally asked the question I'd been dying to ask: How'd you come up with "Metcalfe's Law"?<p>Metcalfe's Law states the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of devices of the system.<p>When I finally asked him, he looked at me and said "I made it up."<p>Me: .. what?<p>Him: I was selling network cards and I wanted people to buy more.<p>Me: .. what?<p>Him: If I could convince someone to buy 4 instead of 2, that was great. So I told them buying more made each of them more valuable.<p>It was mind blowing because so many other things were built on that "law" that began as a sales pitch. Lots of people have proven out "more nodes are more valuable" but that's where it started.<p>He also tells a story about declining a job with Steve Jobs to start 3Com and Steve later coming to his wedding. He also shared a scan of his original pitch deck for 3Com which was a set of transparencies because Powerpoint hadn't been invented yet. I think I kept a copy of it..