Founders · Jul 18How The Sun Rose On Silicon Valley: Bob Noyce (Founder of Intel)
Noyce's silicon integrated circuit came from here, and the firm grew from 12 to 12,000 staff and from a few thousand dollars to $130 million in sales in 10 years. Noyce hired green graduates and let them decide, and its defectors started more than 50 chip companies. After he left it hired Motorola's Les Hogan and his whole team.
Tips
- Bob Noyce put a whole circuit on one piece of silicon, and it became the industry standard▶ 25:25One circuit in 1959 became 10 by 1964, 1,000 six years later and 32,000 six years after that, and NASA chose Noyce's chip for its first onboard computers.
- Bob Noyce handed 24-year-old engineers real projects and refused to make their decisions for them▶ 31:06Fairchild grew from 12 employees to 12,000 in ten years while keeping that frontier spirit.
- Fairchild answered Noyce's departure by hiring Motorola's Les Hogan and his whole team▶ 36:44Hogan's package was so large that wealth in the valley came to be measured in Hogans.
- Noyce's Fairchild alumni, the Fair children, started over 50 companies and made Silicon Valley▶ 32:06
