Industry Expert Blogs

This is the story of how three rival Ph.D. engineers joined forces to start a company to attempt to disrupt power-management design in mobile devices.

The moral of the story (spoiler alert) is, you can create a semiconductor startup in Silicon Valley these days with no experience; it just doesn’t look or feel like the ones in the TV show “Silicon Valley.”

Harvard graduate and co-founder Wonyoung Kim came to Cadence May 20 to discuss Lion Semiconductor, the power management IC (PMIC) company he and some fellow Ph.D.s created two years ago. In a self-effacing but inspiring 45-minute talk, he described how the team went from concept to tapeout, found investors, and learned enough fast enough to fill a business case study.

“Luckily it’s still very possible to start a semiconductor company,” he said.