Building for the Long Term: A 30-Year Journey in Semiconductors
From a 20-person startup to a global semiconductor company
My professional journey has been extraordinary. I’ve helped grow a startup from a small team in 1994 into a global organisation with nearly €1 billion in annual revenue. Rather than moving between companies, I’ve had the privilege of adapting my leadership every few years as the company matured through distinct stages.
Looking back, I have realised that sustainable growth is rarely about a single breakthrough. It is the result of steadily adapting business models, maintaining a committed team, and an unrelenting focus on shifting market trends.
In the early years, we operated entirely on a custom-work basis. This was a successful approach because it allowed us to establish a solid reputation and created a valuable network with some of the industry leaders. For the company to truly scale, however, we realised that we needed to pivot toward a catalogue-based product strategy.
This shift was a defining moment. It allowed us to decouple revenue from engineering headcount, enabling the company to scale exponentially by targeting entire market segments rather than individual customer budgets.
I learned how to lead an engineering organisation through the cultural and operational transition from a service-oriented mindset, focused on a single customer, to a product-oriented mindset, focused on capturing market share.
No 30-year career is without its storms. I was part of the leadership team that navigated the 2008 financial crisis and a multi-year patent challenge that threatened our core business.
These experiences taught me the importance of calm, pragmatic leadership during a crisis. It also shaped my perspective on how economic cycles get amplified or diminished depending on a company’s specific position within the semiconductor value chain.
As we approached the €1B mark, the challenges changed again. The niche we had identified nearly 30 years ago had transformed into a massive, highly competitive market. Sustaining our growth required diversification and increased cost-competitiveness.
The key to sustained growth lies in combating complacency and encouraging a high-performing team to adapt their habits and remain relevant in a constantly changing market.