6 ms·

TSMC was founded by Morris Chang when he was 55 years old

89 points by pcl 3y ago

veeti 3y ago
https://archive.is/QsJxJ https://archive.is/QsJxJ
bradhe 3y ago
The founders of Snowflake were in their mid/late 40s when they kicked off.
dmarchand90 3y ago
It is a mild pet peeve of mine these titles which make it sound like these entrepreneurs weren't doing anything before starting their reputation making companies. He had already gotten a masters at MIT and a phd from Stanford. From his Wikipedia: During his 25-year career (1958–1983) at Texas Instruments, he rose up in the ranks to become the group vice president responsible for TI's worldwide semiconductor business.[13] In the late 1970s, when TI's focus turned to calculators, digital watches and home computers, Chang felt like his career focused on semiconductors was at a dead end at TI.[2] Chang left TI and later became president and chief operating officer of General Instrument Corporation (1984–1985).[14] So he was already running massive companies by that point anyway haha
- m463 3y ago
  on the other hand, maybe stories like this can get a 55 year old CEO or CTO to break off and do something cool.
  - chipdart 3y ago
    I doubt that people with established careers in top executive positions can't lead unless they read an article on someone having done that already.
    - fragmede 3y ago
      yeah but it could still be the push that a 55 years old exec needs to go off into the wilderness and start their own thing.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - m463 3y ago
      maybe not the article, but the data that people of an uncommon age have been successful doing something. It's like learning how many people 55 are meeting online and getting married, or starting an exercise program and doing some event, etc. someone is setting an example, and this documents it.
- wslh 3y ago
  The main point I see is the age beyond its background in a "very young oriented" startup community. Just see YC. It is obvious that you cannot build a company such as TSMC coming from nowhere. I don't think it is important that he went to MIT or work for a specific company such as TI. He could study and work in less known places but could had the knowledge, drive and was in the right place to start a business. He is an entrepreneur.
  - kredd 3y ago
    Very hot take for these types of forums, but credentials and connections matter a lot. Maybe they matter less the closer you get to America, but having a degree from MIT or equivalent, opens up enormous doors in the East. So, I would argue, if he “just had the knowledge” the odds would be against him.
    - wslh 3y ago
      My argument was to balance against the age because it is purely neglected in the startup community. Connections and trust could be built around the world, including the United States.
    - otoburb 3y ago
      >>[...] credentials and connections matter a lot. Paul Graham tried to add a bit of nuance to your point in a recent essay[1]: "The empirical evidence is clear on this. If you look at where the largest numbers of successful startups come from, it's pretty much the same as the list of the most selective universities. I don't think it's the prestigious names of these universities that cause more good startups to come out of them. Nor do I think it's because the quality of the teaching is better. What's driving this is simply the difficulty of getting in. You have to be pretty smart and determined to get into MIT or Cambridge, so if you do manage to get in, you'll find the other students include a lot of smart and determined people." Also check out the footnote he wrote for the above paragraph. Not that we all take pg's word as startup gospel, but his main point is that connections matter much more than the (final degree) credential. [1] https://paulgraham.com/google.html https://paulgraham.com/google.html
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dustincoates 3y ago
There's something that always amuses me about these articles, in that I think they serve as some sort of inspiration porn for people who are getting older but aren't successful. Look! A 55 year old did this! You can, too. But then you dig in, and you see that they were high powered execs before, or they had founded companies that were mid-level successes. I'm not sure why I feel this way. I feel very strongly that people can reinvent themselves. But I think there's some important context that's often skipped over: if you want to be successful when you're older, it helps to try and be successful when you're younger.
- mojuba 3y ago
  No doubt about it, but the article is talking about a hypersuccessful megacompany (that manufactures 60% the world's microchips) compared to other megacompanies in tech. I'd also point out that we are talking about hardware which is always, always harder than software. Show me a famous purely hardware company founded by a 19 year old college drop out.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    You mean Dell? It was started in Michael Dell's dorm room at the University of Texas after dropping out.
    - mojuba 3y ago
      He didn't design anything, he started by putting together PC upgrade kits.
      - fragmede 3y ago
        If you're trying to say that Dell isn't a hardware company just because of where they started, I don't know what to tell you.
- delegate 3y ago
  I got fit after 40 and my fitness level keeps increasing now that I'm nearing 50, endurance sports are now part of my life. Me ! The obese slob on a bunch of pills for heart and kidney conditions and getting ready to die. All it took was to accidentally meet the person who showed me the way. After dozens of mountain peaks climbed, thousands of km ridden on the bike and buckets of sweat left in yoga classes, I now look like a model and I have women's eyes on me each time I look around. The most beautiful too, because they know what it takes. Radical change is possible and from what I've seen, some people just take a bit longer to wake up to their true potential. Believing that you have what it takes is all it takes :).
jexp 3y ago
There was a really awesome deep history of TSMC on the Acquired podcast https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/tsmc https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/tsmc
- consumer451 3y ago
  > David: This may be the craziest part about the whole TSMC founding story. I'm 99.9% sure, Ben, you do not know this. Do you know what the pre-money valuation was on TSMC? > Ben: No, I couldn't find that anywhere. > David: It was $0. Morris Chang got no equity. Zero. > Ben: So 100% of the company was owned by the investors? > David: Fifty percent by the government and the other 50% were owned by the investors. Morris got nothing. > Ben: And just got to keep his salary. > David: He was a government employee. > Ben: Wow. > David: There by the grace of the government. > Ben: Oh my God. > David: Isn't that unbelievable? This is so the opposite of Silicon Valley.
  - klelatti 3y ago
    I wonder if there are few things going on here. If TSMC was a success then he would be well enough rewarded and not everyone wants to be a billionaire. Then there is the reduced influence from having no equity. I guess if Chang was dependent on government support and confident in his ability to influence government then having some equity makes little difference?
helsinkiandrew 3y ago
There's an interesting read of the possible reasons different companies succeed with different aged founders here: Research: The Average Age of a Successful Startup Founder Is 45 https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-successful-startup-founder-is-45 https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes... discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18212409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18212409
nabla9 3y ago
Half of the story. Taiwanese government gave Morris Chang blank check to build Taiwanese chip industry and provided 48 percent of the funding. Li Kwoh-ting (economist and politician, "Father of Taiwan's Economic Miracle") transformed Taiwan from agricultural society into tech-giant. Without Li, there would be no TSMC. Early on Taiwanese government decided to focus on two areas: plastics and electronics. Both paid off, but electronics really took off.
- wslh 3y ago
  Taiwan was really smart either. People don't live in a vacuum. Except in very rare cases.
- rospaya 3y ago
  Sounds like it would be a cool book to read.
  - sherr 3y ago
    A good book on semiconductors is "Chip War" by Chris Miller. It talks at length about TSMC and Morris Chang. Great book. [1] https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/Chip-War/Chris-Miller/9781398504127 https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/Chip-War/Chris-Mill...
- ahartmetz 3y ago
  > plastics and electronics Ah - computer fans! They are everywhere in Taiwan, I've seen them on food carts for ventilation ;)
- newyankee 3y ago
  Hopefully a channel like Asianometry can shed more light on the political nuances that helped them and why such a thing could not happen in other countries. The blank check, fast decision making and having the right limited geography and talent had to be leveraged, and good leadership was the catalyst needed.
  - nabla9 3y ago
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
The ageism in this industry is so profound that this kind of thing is somehow either surprising or notable to people. In serious engineering professions, industry and life experience and age are considered pre-reqs to advancement. And it used to be like this in computing, too. It's gotten worse over the last 20 years.
- anonoldat43 3y ago
  Anecdotal, but I suspect I’m not alone here: I’m 43, and can’t shake the feeling that I’m aging out. At 43!
melodyogonna 3y ago
More like founded by Taiwanese government when Morris Chang was 55 years old
- chipdart 3y ago
  The Taiwanese government funded the project and certainly contributed to unblock problems, but why are you singling out in this case the importance of funding and who are the investors in detriment of who is actually making things possible?
robinacc 3y ago
The govt gave an already successful man to jump start their tech .. hmm not to big of a stretch .. he got handed a blank check to do what he built his whole life todo .
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
blufish 3y ago
Lesson it’s never too late to start
hownottowrite 3y ago
“Without work there is no life…” That’s not something you’re going to hear from someone in their 20s or 30s, even a few decades ago. This is an attitude that you develop as you get older and become more experienced. It also helps if you’ve already checked a lot of boxes along the way (family, success, and so on). Sure, Chang was the right person at the right place at the right time, but TSMC could only be built by someone in their 50s. Someone who understood from experience that the work is more important than the accolades because they lived it. Incredible story end to end.

89 points by pcl 3y ago

veeti 3y ago

https://archive.is/QsJxJ https://archive.is/QsJxJ

bradhe 3y ago

The founders of Snowflake were in their mid/late 40s when they kicked off.

dmarchand90 3y ago

It is a mild pet peeve of mine these titles which make it sound like these entrepreneurs weren't doing anything before starting their reputation making companies. He had already gotten a masters at MIT and a phd from Stanford. From his Wikipedia: During his 25-year career (1958–1983) at Texas Instruments, he rose up in the ranks to become the group vice president responsible for TI's worldwide semiconductor business.[13] In the late 1970s, when TI's focus turned to calculators, digital watches and home computers, Chang felt like his career focused on semiconductors was at a dead end at TI.[2] Chang left TI and later became president and chief operating officer of General Instrument Corporation (1984–1985).[14] So he was already running massive companies by that point anyway haha

m463 3y ago
on the other hand, maybe stories like this can get a 55 year old CEO or CTO to break off and do something cool.
- chipdart 3y ago
  I doubt that people with established careers in top executive positions can't lead unless they read an article on someone having done that already.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    yeah but it could still be the push that a 55 years old exec needs to go off into the wilderness and start their own thing.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - m463 3y ago
    maybe not the article, but the data that people of an uncommon age have been successful doing something. It's like learning how many people 55 are meeting online and getting married, or starting an exercise program and doing some event, etc. someone is setting an example, and this documents it.
wslh 3y ago
The main point I see is the age beyond its background in a "very young oriented" startup community. Just see YC. It is obvious that you cannot build a company such as TSMC coming from nowhere. I don't think it is important that he went to MIT or work for a specific company such as TI. He could study and work in less known places but could had the knowledge, drive and was in the right place to start a business. He is an entrepreneur.
- kredd 3y ago
  Very hot take for these types of forums, but credentials and connections matter a lot. Maybe they matter less the closer you get to America, but having a degree from MIT or equivalent, opens up enormous doors in the East. So, I would argue, if he “just had the knowledge” the odds would be against him.
  - wslh 3y ago
    My argument was to balance against the age because it is purely neglected in the startup community. Connections and trust could be built around the world, including the United States.
  - otoburb 3y ago
    >>[...] credentials and connections matter a lot. Paul Graham tried to add a bit of nuance to your point in a recent essay[1]: "The empirical evidence is clear on this. If you look at where the largest numbers of successful startups come from, it's pretty much the same as the list of the most selective universities. I don't think it's the prestigious names of these universities that cause more good startups to come out of them. Nor do I think it's because the quality of the teaching is better. What's driving this is simply the difficulty of getting in. You have to be pretty smart and determined to get into MIT or Cambridge, so if you do manage to get in, you'll find the other students include a lot of smart and determined people." Also check out the footnote he wrote for the above paragraph. Not that we all take pg's word as startup gospel, but his main point is that connections matter much more than the (final degree) credential. [1] https://paulgraham.com/google.html https://paulgraham.com/google.html

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

dustincoates 3y ago

There's something that always amuses me about these articles, in that I think they serve as some sort of inspiration porn for people who are getting older but aren't successful. Look! A 55 year old did this! You can, too. But then you dig in, and you see that they were high powered execs before, or they had founded companies that were mid-level successes. I'm not sure why I feel this way. I feel very strongly that people can reinvent themselves. But I think there's some important context that's often skipped over: if you want to be successful when you're older, it helps to try and be successful when you're younger.

mojuba 3y ago
No doubt about it, but the article is talking about a hypersuccessful megacompany (that manufactures 60% the world's microchips) compared to other megacompanies in tech. I'd also point out that we are talking about hardware which is always, always harder than software. Show me a famous purely hardware company founded by a 19 year old college drop out.
- fragmede 3y ago
  You mean Dell? It was started in Michael Dell's dorm room at the University of Texas after dropping out.
  - mojuba 3y ago
    He didn't design anything, he started by putting together PC upgrade kits.
    - fragmede 3y ago
      If you're trying to say that Dell isn't a hardware company just because of where they started, I don't know what to tell you.
delegate 3y ago
I got fit after 40 and my fitness level keeps increasing now that I'm nearing 50, endurance sports are now part of my life. Me ! The obese slob on a bunch of pills for heart and kidney conditions and getting ready to die. All it took was to accidentally meet the person who showed me the way. After dozens of mountain peaks climbed, thousands of km ridden on the bike and buckets of sweat left in yoga classes, I now look like a model and I have women's eyes on me each time I look around. The most beautiful too, because they know what it takes. Radical change is possible and from what I've seen, some people just take a bit longer to wake up to their true potential. Believing that you have what it takes is all it takes :).

jexp 3y ago

There was a really awesome deep history of TSMC on the Acquired podcast https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/tsmc https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/tsmc

consumer451 3y ago
> David: This may be the craziest part about the whole TSMC founding story. I'm 99.9% sure, Ben, you do not know this. Do you know what the pre-money valuation was on TSMC? > Ben: No, I couldn't find that anywhere. > David: It was $0. Morris Chang got no equity. Zero. > Ben: So 100% of the company was owned by the investors? > David: Fifty percent by the government and the other 50% were owned by the investors. Morris got nothing. > Ben: And just got to keep his salary. > David: He was a government employee. > Ben: Wow. > David: There by the grace of the government. > Ben: Oh my God. > David: Isn't that unbelievable? This is so the opposite of Silicon Valley.
- klelatti 3y ago
  I wonder if there are few things going on here. If TSMC was a success then he would be well enough rewarded and not everyone wants to be a billionaire. Then there is the reduced influence from having no equity. I guess if Chang was dependent on government support and confident in his ability to influence government then having some equity makes little difference?

helsinkiandrew 3y ago

There's an interesting read of the possible reasons different companies succeed with different aged founders here: Research: The Average Age of a Successful Startup Founder Is 45 https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-successful-startup-founder-is-45 https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes... discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18212409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18212409

nabla9 3y ago

Half of the story. Taiwanese government gave Morris Chang blank check to build Taiwanese chip industry and provided 48 percent of the funding. Li Kwoh-ting (economist and politician, "Father of Taiwan's Economic Miracle") transformed Taiwan from agricultural society into tech-giant. Without Li, there would be no TSMC. Early on Taiwanese government decided to focus on two areas: plastics and electronics. Both paid off, but electronics really took off.

wslh 3y ago
Taiwan was really smart either. People don't live in a vacuum. Except in very rare cases.
rospaya 3y ago
Sounds like it would be a cool book to read.
- sherr 3y ago
  A good book on semiconductors is "Chip War" by Chris Miller. It talks at length about TSMC and Morris Chang. Great book. [1] https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/Chip-War/Chris-Miller/9781398504127 https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/Chip-War/Chris-Mill...
ahartmetz 3y ago
> plastics and electronics Ah - computer fans! They are everywhere in Taiwan, I've seen them on food carts for ventilation ;)
newyankee 3y ago
Hopefully a channel like Asianometry can shed more light on the political nuances that helped them and why such a thing could not happen in other countries. The blank check, fast decision making and having the right limited geography and talent had to be leveraged, and good leadership was the catalyst needed.
- nabla9 3y ago

cmrdporcupine 3y ago

The ageism in this industry is so profound that this kind of thing is somehow either surprising or notable to people. In serious engineering professions, industry and life experience and age are considered pre-reqs to advancement. And it used to be like this in computing, too. It's gotten worse over the last 20 years.

anonoldat43 3y ago
Anecdotal, but I suspect I’m not alone here: I’m 43, and can’t shake the feeling that I’m aging out. At 43!

melodyogonna 3y ago

More like founded by Taiwanese government when Morris Chang was 55 years old

chipdart 3y ago
The Taiwanese government funded the project and certainly contributed to unblock problems, but why are you singling out in this case the importance of funding and who are the investors in detriment of who is actually making things possible?

robinacc 3y ago

The govt gave an already successful man to jump start their tech .. hmm not to big of a stretch .. he got handed a blank check to do what he built his whole life todo .

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

blufish 3y ago

Lesson it’s never too late to start

hownottowrite 3y ago

“Without work there is no life…” That’s not something you’re going to hear from someone in their 20s or 30s, even a few decades ago. This is an attitude that you develop as you get older and become more experienced. It also helps if you’ve already checked a lot of boxes along the way (family, success, and so on). Sure, Chang was the right person at the right place at the right time, but TSMC could only be built by someone in their 50s. Someone who understood from experience that the work is more important than the accolades because they lived it. Incredible story end to end.