From: acquiredfm
Irwin Mark Jacobs, born in 1933 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, is an American pioneer in the wireless and communications industry [00:00:03]. His journey from a gifted math and science student to a leading entrepreneur in telecommunications exemplifies a significant shift from academic pursuits to commercial innovation.
Early Life and Academic Foundations
Jacobs grew up in a middle-class family, with his father running a local restaurant [00:00:48]. Displaying exceptional talent in math and sciences from a young age [00:01:02], he initially pursued hotel management at Cornell University due to his high school guidance counselor’s advice that “there’s no future for Math and Science in New Bedford” [00:01:18]. However, after a year and a half, he discovered electrical engineering, realizing he could “make money with math and science” [00:02:28]. Jacobs credited this initial foray into hotel management with providing him with valuable business acumen, including accounting and real-world applications, which would later prove crucial for starting his first company and Qualcomm [00:02:08].
After transferring to electrical engineering, Jacobs proved to be a genius [00:03:09]. He graduated from Cornell and went on to complete his PhD at MIT in just three years, finishing in 1959 [00:03:17]. His doctoral studies were under the tutelage of Claude Shannon, the “father of information theory” [00:03:20]. This mentorship was pivotal, as it’s considered “extremely unlikely that Irwin Jacobs becomes the Irwin Jacobs he went on to be” without studying under Shannon [00:03:55].
Transition to Academic Leadership and Consulting
Upon completing his PhD, Jacobs was immediately asked to stay on as a professor at MIT, a testament to his talent [00:04:15]. During his five years at MIT, he taught the world’s first course on digital communications, applying Shannon’s theories to train practical engineers [00:04:31]. He also co-authored the first textbook on digital communications, which remains a foundational text (“the Bible of digital communication Theory”) to this day [00:04:50].
In 1964, Jacobs took a sabbatical to work at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, focusing on the U.S. Space Program and satellite communications [00:05:13]. There, he met Andrew Viterbi, another MIT electrical engineering PhD graduate, and they quickly became close friends [00:05:28]. Jacobs later moved to San Diego to start the electrical engineering department at the new UC San Diego, bringing Viterbi with him [00:06:07]. While teaching, Jacobs continued his contracting work with defense contractors and JPL [00:06:39].
Founding Linkabit: From Consulting to Commercial Ventures
Recognizing the challenges of balancing academic work with their consulting projects, Jacobs, Viterbi, and a third professor (Len Kleinrock, who later became a core founding father of the internet [00:09:15]) decided to form a “shell company” called Linkabit in the early 1970s [00:07:32]. Initially, Linkabit was intended merely to manage their consulting work for NASA and Navy defense projects, primarily focusing on efficient satellite communications given the narrow bandwidth available [00:07:38]. Their work often involved applying “spread spectrum technology” invented during World War II by Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil [00:10:33].
By 1971, Linkabit had grown significantly, accumulating an “Army of the greatest information Theory and wireless signal Minds in the country” dedicated to defense contracting [00:11:13]. Irwin Jacobs decided to take a sabbatical from UCSD to organize the company, and he never returned to academia [00:11:43]. This marked a crucial shift in his career and Linkabit’s business model.
“Those guys are making all the money, we’re doing all the differentiated like engineering work here. What if we started bidding on some contracts ourselves? We would probably make a lot more money as like a kind of product like, you know, contract focused Services Company ourselves rather than just as a subconsultant on these projects” [00:12:16]
This realization led Linkabit to transition from being a sub-consultant to actively bidding for prime contracts [00:12:31]. To achieve this, they needed to expand into the commercial sector [00:13:10]. Linkabit’s first major commercial project was developing the satellite communication system for Walmart, enabling the retailer to beam daily messages from headquarters to its stores [00:13:43]. This early project for Walmart, a leading innovator in retail at the time, demonstrates Linkabit’s adaptation of its business model from purely academic consulting to a product and service-focused commercial enterprise [00:14:13].
This transition from academia to full-time entrepreneurship, leveraging deep scientific knowledge in digital communications and initial business exposure, laid the groundwork for Jacobs’ future endeavors, including the founding of Qualcomm.