Qualcomm - Acquired  ## Metadata - Author: **Acquired** - Full Title: Qualcomm - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/d34d9317-5dcd-4e22-90db-d6739b107ef3 ## Highlights - The Founding Engineer of the Internet Key takeaways: • Link a bit, the company founded by Len Kleinrock, was not successful. • Len Kleinrock is a well-known figure in tech history. • Listeners should be familiar with his name. Transcript: Speaker 1 We could probably get some, you know, efficiencies here, maybe hire an assistant, help us out, that kind of stuff. And they say, great. You know, we don't intend this to be a real company. We're not going to make any products or anything. This is just to manage our consulting. They sort of tongue in cheek decide to call it link a bit, like linking a bit. It was a very like academic joke. So who is this third partner in Link a bit? He ends up not kind of gelling with the other two, leaves shortly thereafter. His name is Len Kleinrock. And I read that the first time and I was like, I've heard that name before. Speaker 2 I know that name. And I'm going to guess 99% of listeners haven't heard that name. But if you're you and me and all we do all day is study tech history and the history of the internet, that name should ring a bell. Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, you know, first you read this history and you're like, man, bummer for Len. He missed out on founding Qualcomm. Well, he actually ended up okay because instead of founding Qualcomm, he founded the internet. He literally was the, I think the founding engineer on the ARPANET project at DARPA. Many people were involved in the ARPANET project. Is that ARPA? I don't know if that's ARPANET. Yeah, ARPANET, which was the precursor to DARPANET, which is the precursor to the internet. ([Time 0:28:47](https://share.snipd.com/snip/74c0e9bd-fb95-417c-9db0-81904095a4f9)) - The Prime's Influence on Today's Defense Contractors Key takeaways: • If you are a prime defense contractor, you are still a prime today. • Link a bit is a prime defense contractor and their first project was doing the satellite communications system for Walmart. Transcript: Speaker 1 If you can be a prime, the primes back then, primes being prime defense contractors, they're still the primes today. That is a gravy train that like, yeah, Raytheon, Lockheed, Boeing, all these companies. Of course, they start doing this, but there's a reason the primes then are the primes now. Link a bit is not going to be a prime then or ever. If they're going to do this, they need to move into the commercial sphere. This is like what are these? It's like history was made for a choir. Do you know what the first contract project that Link a bit did was? If you knew you would just be like, I don't. Smiling so wide right now. They hear about, remember, their expertise is in satellite communications. They hear about a regional retailer. Speaker 2 No. Did they do Walmart's satellite network? Speaker 1 Yeah, they did. What? Yeah. They hear about this eccentric founder of this small Midwestern regional retailer that for some reason wants to beam himself talking every day to all of, from HQ to all of the local stores Of this, a local outlets of this retailer. Link of its first project is doing the satellite communications system for Walmart. That's wild. Speaker 2 Listeners, for anyone who didn't listen to our Walmart episode, Walmart was for a very long time the most innovative retailer on the planet. I mean, until Amazon, basically. One of the illustrations of this is in the late 70s and then continuing into their early 80s when they actually lit it up, they invested tens of millions of dollars into building a private Satellite relay because the bandwidth available on the internet was insufficient for them at the time. ([Time 0:33:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a5fbc989-4218-4932-8dc7-b50260c93ebe))