Founders of Linksys, started their small business and home networking company in a garagein Irvine, CA in 1988. Victor and Janie Tsao Victor and Janie Tsao earned a $500 million payday from Cisco by producing wireless networking components for the 802.11g Wi-Fi standard before it was even finalized.
That's impressive for a tiny company that had found a niche retailing gear to small businesses wanting economical local-area networks (LAN). It's even more impressive that an industry leader like Cisco has seen fit to let Linksys remain a distinct division responsible for its own brand name. And Cisco invited the Tsaos to stay on as CEO (Victor) and CFO.
In 1988 the Tsaos had an idea for a product to let several computers share a single printer. At the time Victor was working as an IT exec for Irvine-based Taco Bell and Janie was a programmer for the retail conglomerate Carter Hawley Hale. They had two young sons aged 2 and 4. It was something of a gamble when they decided to have Janie quit her job to start Linksys and financed the company from savings. At the time of the deal with Cisco, Linksys had grown to 300 employees and could claim 39% share of the nascent home wireless networking market.The nascent Wi-Fi industry may well be its golden opportunity, with a 35% per year projected growth rate. Its newly-acquired image as a leader in that segment may well make Linksys the silver bullet that helps Cisco hit its growth targets for the wireless era.
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