Erwin Jacobs, every mention
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Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Erwin Jacobs comes up
TSMC founder Morris Chang · Acquired
- ▶ 1:56:25 Morris Chang They started, uh, Erwin Jacobs started Qualcomm.
Qualcomm · Acquired
- ▶ 8:20 David Rosenthal oh, I didn't know Erwin Jacobs, co-founder and CEO of Qualcomm, was born in Europe.
- ▶ 21:06 David Rosenthal Is one Erwin Marc Jacobs, an American born in 1933, as we mentioned, in scrappy New Bedford, Massachusetts, which used to be, I believe, the wealthiest town in America during the whaling era, as we discussed during Standard Oil or…
- ▶ 21:26 Ben Gilbert It was Berkshire because 45 years before Erwin Jacobs was born in New Bedford, the, ah, Hathaway
- ▶ 21:49 David Rosenthal So, Erwin is a pretty amazing American story.
- ▶ 22:09 David Rosenthal Erwin was highly gifted in math and sciences as a kid going through school.
- ▶ 22:33 David Rosenthal Uh, so Erwin, though, had very good grades growing up, and the guidance counselor encouraged him to go to the world-famous Cornell School of Hotel Management so that he could learn the hospitality management business and come back and work…
- ▶ 24:07 David Rosenthal After the dean, like, picked himself up off the floor, he, uh, he allowed it, uh, perhaps with a degree of suspicion, um, which he need not have because Erwin is another genius in this string of geniuses.
- ▶ 24:44 Ben Gilbert No question, Erwin Jacobs and Jensen at NVIDIA and Steve Jobs, geniuses.
- ▶ 24:55 Ben Gilbert Yeah, it's, it's the most incredible right place, right time in history too, because without studying under Claude Shannon, the father of information theory, it's extremely unlikely that Erwin Jacobs becomes the Erwin Jacobs he went on to…
- ▶ 25:17 David Rosenthal So, Erwin is so, young Erwin is so talented that, um, after he finishes his PhD in three years, you know, mere, like, five years removed from being a hotel management major at Cordell at Shannon and MIT, ask him to stay on as a professor…
- ▶ 26:09 David Rosenthal Uh, and written by, by Erwin, distilled, you know, from the father himself of Claude Shannon.
- ▶ 26:58 David Rosenthal So fast friends, in fact, that when Erwin returns back to Boston to
- ▶ 27:13 David Rosenthal Erwin then gets a call shortly thereafter from one of his former professors at Cornell that a new engineering school in San Diego is being started, the new UC San Diego, and there's an opportunity for Jacobs to come out and start the…
- ▶ 27:42 David Rosenthal So, he and his family, Erwin and his family move out to UCSD.
- ▶ 28:00 Ben Gilbert It's just kind of Erwin doing contracting.
- ▶ 30:30 David Rosenthal Um, so Andy and Erwin, they're mostly continuing to work on NASA and Navy defense projects in San Diego, because, of course, San Diego is a U.S.
- ▶ 32:11 David Rosenthal Um, Erwin's exercising the, like, hotel management sort of side of his brain as he's doing this.
- ▶ 32:51 David Rosenthal Erwin decides he's going to take a sabbatical from UCSD and spend a year just organizing the company.
- ▶ 37:33 David Rosenthal And so Jacobs and Viterbi and all the, the brain trust at Linkabit, they, they solve that problem.
- ▶ 37:56 David Rosenthal That's Erwin and Andy, right there.
- ▶ 40:42 David Rosenthal So, you know, Erwin and Andy, like, they're, they are first-rate academics, you know, as hopefully we've told the story here, like,
- ▶ 40:50 David Rosenthal Among the most brilliant minds in the world, but they're also like, especially Erwin, like incredible business people, market analysts, like they're very aware, like the products they developed, the link of it, they're aware that this…
- ▶ 43:08 David Rosenthal Uh, so, you know, the Linkabet folks, everyone and Andy, they see, they see this, they know, and they're like, oh, this industry is in its infancy.
- ▶ 43:30 David Rosenthal In July of 1985, with seven, seven in total, Andy, Erwin, and five other of the best Linkabit engineers, they meet at Erwin's house, and they decided to start this new company, and they name it Qualcomm.
- ▶ 52:41 Ben Gilbert Over to Qualcomm, so they're, they're thinking about doing this, this satellite communication thing, and remember, Erwin studied with Claude Shannon, so he's always thinking about what is the most efficient way to use all the way up to the…
- ▶ 1:14:21 David Rosenthal Qualcomm immediately, like, goes to Washington, like, Erwin and Andy, they go, they go to, they go to DC, and they're like, hey, just to make sure, we just want to, like, be crystal clear, can you confirm to us that even though this other…
- ▶ 1:21:08 David Rosenthal November of 1989, they host a demo, you know, with the Pactel money, but they invite the whole rest of the industry in San Diego, uh, and there's famously a little hiccup where, like, they're about to, you know, Erwin's giving, like, a big…
- ▶ 1:40:47 David Rosenthal Um, then in 2005, Erwin, uh, retires as, uh, as CEO, um,
- ▶ 2:12:21 David Rosenthal We didn't talk about this, but Erwin is, Erwin is one of the great philanthropists of the past century, like, uh, undoubtedly, uh, but to UCSD, the UC system, so many, like, so much of,