“Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive”.
Those are the words that have been most commonly used as the tech world gathers to remember Intel co-founder Andy Grove, who died on 21 March, aged 79.
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A Hungarian immigrant, Grove is credited with being one of the driving forces who helped grow Intel into the world’s largest manufacturer of semiconductors. He’s also been called the “guy who drove the growth phase” of Silicon Valley.
Grove was born to a middle-class family in Budapest, Hungary in 1936, the son of Maria and George Gróf. His early childhood years saw his homeland occupied by Nazis, with he and his mother taking on false identities to escape being sent to concentration camps. His father was taken to a labour camp, but was reunited with his family at the end of the war.
After the defeat of the Nazis, Hungary fell to communist rule, leading Grove to escape to the US in 1957, aged 20. There, he changed his surname, learned English, and eventually earned a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1963.
From there, he worked at Fairchild Semiconductors until 1967 when he and fellow Fairchild engineers Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce left to form Intel.
Grove worked initially as the company’s director of engineering, and helped get its early manufacturing operations started. One of the most important decisions he made during the company’s early years was to move it from making dynamic memory chips (known as DRAMS) to manufacturing microprocessors.
Grove was Intel’s president in 1979, its CEO in 1987, and its Chairman and CEO in 1997. During his tenure as CEO, Grove oversaw a 4 500% increase in Intel’s market capitalization from US$4-billion to US$197-billion, making it the world’s seventh largest company, with 64 000 employees. He retired as CEO in 1998 after being diagnosed with prostate cancer, but stayed on as chairman until 2004.
Known for his egalitarian management style, Grove worked in an ordinary cubicle on the Intel floor for his whole career, and ensured that there were no reserved parking spots. He was, however, a stickler for details, going as far as correcting spelling errors on reports that came across his desk.
A number of tech luminaries have paid tribute to Grove on Twitter:
Andy Grove was one of the giants of the technology world. He loved our country and epitomized America at its best. Rest in peace.
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) March 22, 2016
I’m sad to hear that Andy Grove has died. I loved working with him. He was one of the great business leaders of the 20th century.
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) March 22, 2016
RIP Andy Grove, took @intel & its microprocessors to the top, and kept them there: https://t.co/qLDddEDlhe
— Paul Allen (@PaulGAllen) March 22, 2016
Andy Grove, RIP. Thank you for inspiring all of us who are immigrant founders. Your plain talk will be missed. https://t.co/hfE4cLwxQu
— Om Malik (@om) March 22, 2016
RIP Andy Grove. The best company builder Silicon Valley has ever seen, and likely will ever see.
— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) March 22, 2016
Image: Intel Free Press via Flickr.
