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Hello everyone and welcome back to Invested, my podcast series where I chat with creators, founders, and business leaders making an impact on this world and today’s guest has certainly done just that. In today’s episode I will be sitting down with T.J. Rodgers.
T.J. is a legendary figure in the semiconductor industry and Silicon Valley as a whole. In 1982 he co-founded Cypress Semiconductor, a leading provider of embedded semiconductors.
Under Rodgers' leadership from 1982 to 2016, Cypress grew from a startup into a multi-billion dollar company. He took the company public in 1986 and oversaw its expansion into new markets like USB controllers, WiFi, and microcontrollers. Rodgers served as Cypress’s CEO for 34 years until stepping down in August 2016 as the longest-tenured CEO among all publically-traded technology companies. In 2020 Cypress completed its acquisition by Infineon Technologies, where it was purchased for close to $9 Billion dollars.
Rodgers is known for his outspoken personality and contrarian management style. So much so that he was coined “America’s Toughest Boss” by Fortune Magazine in 1993.
Before Silicon Valley, Rodgers was a Sloan scholar at Dartmouth, where he graduated in 1970 as the Salutatorian of his class with a double major in physics and chemistry. He later served on Dartmouth’s Board of Trustees from 2004 to 2012, endowed two chairs at the College and currently holds the title Trustee Emeritus.
Rodgers then attended Stanford University on a Hertz fellowship, earning a master’s degree in 1973 and a Ph.D. in 1975, both in electrical engineering.
Called “a quintessential entrepreneurial company” by The Wall Street Journal, Cypress had 27 of its alumni move on to become Silicon Valley CEOs. Rodgers has received multiple awards for entrepreneurial excellence, the most prestigious of which are the Encore Award from the Stanford University Business School as entrepreneurial company of the year in 1988 and the Entrepreneur of the Year award from Ernst & Young, in 1991.
Rodgers holds 20 patents, and as a life-long proponent of free markets he has testified before Congress five times - an act that put him on the cover of Business Week magazine with the title, “Bad Boy of Silicon Valley.”
As of April this year, T.J. now serves as the CEO of Complete Solaria, a public solar company where he previously served on the board.
T.J. truly loves what he does and has the extensive track record to prove it. At 76 years old, T.J.. still works every day of the week and has fun doing it. In the hours that he is not working he is tending to the 3 vineyards that he owns, where he is looking to harvest some of the best wines on earth.
I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with T.J. and trust you will too. From lessons learned while building a billion dollar company from scratch, to the fight against censorship of free speech on college campuses, this conversation has it all. And with that, my conversation with TJ Rodgers…