Len Bosack

Len Bosack, co-founder of Cisco Systems. Cofounded the company with his wife Sandy Lerner, after Stanford University officials refused their proposition to build and sell their newly developed routers to other universities and research centers who had found out about them and were resquesting them.

Bosack and Lerner started experimenting with connecting their two detached networks located in two different buildings on the Stanford campus. With the help of two other Stanford staff members, Bosack and Lerner ran network cables between the buildings and connected them first with bridges and then routers.

Bosack and Lerner started Cisco Systems in their home, where they built their routers by hand. They had funded their operations with their credit cards, and did not have a dedicated sales staff; still, they were able to bring in $250,000 to $350,000 per month. With no official conventional marketing campaign, they went through 76 refusals from venture capitalists before [http://www.sequoiacap.com/ Sequoia Capital] finally listened to them.

The San Jose Mercury News published a very different account of the origins of Cisco on 2001-01-12: [http://pdp10.nocrew.org/docs/cisco.html A start-up s true tale ]

Sequoia brought in adult supervision to structure a business model for the company. Shortly, Lerner was forced out on August 28, 1990, and Bosack left immediately after he had heard. Both immediately sold their combined two-thirds share in the company for $170 million.

Bosack went on to found [http://www.xkl.com/ XKL] in 1991, which defines itself and its mission thus: A privately funded engineering company, XKL explores and develops new architecture for data communications.

Bosack also works with charitable organizations, including SETI.