Victor Tsao
M.S. in Computer Science, 1980
Victor Tsao and his wife, Janie, started Linksys in their garage in Irvine, Calif., in 1988, and sold it 15 years later for $500 million to Cisco Systems. The company had become the leading provider of networking hardware for homes and small businesses. It was named one of the 500 fastest-growing private companies in North America seven consecutive times by Inc. Magazine. In 2006, it shipped 25 million wireless routers.
Tsao has won numerous entrepreneurship awards, including Inc. Magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year in 2004. He was named one of the Top 10 most influential Asian American business leaders by the U.S. Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce in 2005. Tsao received the 2006 Entrepreneur of the Year award from the International Leadership Foundation and the IIT Professional Achievement Award in 2007.