Photo: Bob Metcalfe, Professor of Innovation at UT, photo by John Davidson
Bob Metcalfe Wants to Create a Better Silicon Valley in Austin, Texas By Laura Lorek, Reporter with Silicon Hills News
At 24 Diner in downtown Austin, Bob Metcalfe orders a large bowl of fruit with extra strawberries and coffee for breakfast. Metcalfe, 68, is training to walk his first marathon. And it’s not an ordinary marathon either. He’s doing the Boston Marathon in April. His wife, Robyn, son, Max and daughter, Julia, are all running the race. Metcalfe’s goal is to finish 26.2 miles in eight hours or under. He is part of the C/I team, which is raising money to help poor kids learn computer programming in Boston. A few years ago, Metcalfe did his first triathlon – the Rookie Tri in Austin. And this past February he finished the Austin Half Marathon. He doesn’t shy away from new challenges. He has summited Mt. Kilimanjaro and hiked through Patagonia. And every ten years he starts a new career. For the past four years, Metcalfe has served as the Professor of
Innovation, Murchison Fellow of Free Enterprise at the University of Texas at Austin. He has taught an undergraduate course on entrepreneurship with Joshua Baer, founder of Capital Factory and Ben Dyer, Entrepreneur in Residence at UT, called Longhorn Startup. It has spawned dozens of startups. Metcalfe also runs the Innovation Center in the Cockrell School of Engineering at UT with Louise Epstein and Dyer. They’ve focused on nurturing UT faculty- run startups through the Longhorn StARTup Studio. Each month, Metcalfe and the Austin Chamber of Commerce host “The stARTup Studio,” an informal gathering to bring the faculty run companies in front of investors, entrepreneurs and other community members to talk about their newest products and inventions. The goal of the studio is to teach faculty the art of technology commercialization, Metcalfe said. Austin is lucky to have Metcalfe here, Baer said.
5