Who Founded Cisco?

Cisco Systems possesses one of the most famous, romanticized, and ultimately contentious founding stories in the history of Silicon Valley. The company was founded in 1984 by a husband-and-wife team, Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner. They were both effective computer scientists working at Stanford University, Bosack managed the computer science department's mainframe computers, while Lerner managed the computers at the Graduate School of Business. The foundational technological breakthrough that birthed the company was born out of a simple, romantic necessity: they wanted to be able to email each other. However, the computer networks in their respective departments used entirely different, incompatible protocols. They could not communicate. To solve this, they designed and built a complex, multi-protocol router, a device that could translate the disparate languages of different networks, allowing them to essentially 'talk' to one another. They connected the two departments, effectively creating the first practical campus-wide local area network (LAN). Realizing the commercial implications of this technology, they founded Cisco (named after the city of San Francisco, famously retaining the lowercase 'c' in early logos and mimicking the Golden Gate Bridge). They initially built routers in their living room and funded the company by heavily mortgaging their house and running up credit card debt. In 1987, seeking scale, they brought in Don Valentine of Sequoia Capital, a well-known, aggressive venture capitalist. Valentine provided funding but demanded corporate control, eventually bringing in a seasoned then-CEO, John Morgridge. The relationship between the founders and the hard-nosed, professional management team violently deteriorated. In 1990, shortly after Cisco executed a successful IPO that made the founders very wealthy, the board ousted Sandy Lerner. In a display of solidarity and disgust with the corporate culture, Leonard Bosack immediately resigned. While the founders walked away with $170 million, they lost control of the company they built, a company that would eventually achieve a very large $500 billion valuation.

Leonard Bosack was born in 1952. Education: La Salle College High School.

Sandy Lerner co-founded Cisco Systems in December 1984 with her then-husband Leonard Bosack, driven by the practical need to connect Stanford University's incompatible computer networks. Lerner's role at Cisco extended far beyond co-founding, she built the company's customer service organization, managed its finances during the bootstrapped early years, and established the customer-centric culture that helped Cisco win its first enterprise accounts. Her ability to translate complex networking technology into business value propositions proved essential in convincing early customers to trust their critical infrastructure to an unproven startup. However, Lerner's management style clashed with the professional executives brought in by venture capitalist Don Valentine after Sequoia Capital's 1987 investment. In 1990, shortly after Cisco's IPO Lerner was fired by then-CEO John Morgridge. She and Bosack sold their combined Cisco stake for approximately $170 million. Lerner subsequently founded Urban Decay cosmetics (sold to LVMH for $350 million in 2012) and purchased Aston Farm in England, where she raises rare-breed livestock and maintains a working Elizabethan-era estate.

Sandy Lerner was born in 1955 in California. Education: California State University, Chico; Claremont Graduate University.