Traitorous Eight - Heritage

Heritage

In 1960–1965 Fairchild was the undisputed leader of the semiconductor market, both technologically and in terms of sales. Early 1965 brought the first signs of management problems. In November 1965, the creators of integrated operational amplifiers Bob Vidlar and David Talbert left for National Semiconductor. In February 1967, they were followed by five top managers who disagreed with Noyce. Noyce started litigation with shareholders and effectively removed himself from the operational management. In July 1967, the company became unprofitable and lost their leading position in the market to Texas Instruments.

In March 1968, Moore and Noyce decided to leave Fairchild and again, as nine years ago, turned to Arthur Rock. In the summer of 1968, they founded N-M Electronics. Blank, Grinich, Kleiner, Last, Hoernie and Roberts, set aside the past disagreements and financially supported the company of Moore and Noyce. A year later, N-M Electronics bought the trade name rights from the hotel chain Intelco and took the name of Intel. Moore held senior positions at Intel until 1997 and as of 2012 is its honorary chairman. Noyce left Intel in 1987 to lead the non-profit consortium Sematech. He died suddenly in 1990, the first of The Eight. Grinich left Fairchild in 1968 for a long-term sabbatical. He is the only member of traitorous eight who did not start his own business, and by the end of his active life taught at Berkeley and Stanford. Blank was the last of The Eight to leave Fairchild, in 1969. He founded the financial firm Xicor specializing in innovative start-ups, and in 2004 sold it for $529 million.

Hoernie headed Amelco until the summer of 1963, and, after the conflict with the Teledyne owners, for three years headed Union Carbide Electronics. In July 1967, supported by the watch company Société Suisse pour l'Industrie Horlogère (the predecessor of Swatch Group) founded Intersil, the company that created the market for custom CMOS circuits. The circuits developed by Intersil for Seiko in 1969–1970 contributed to the rise of Japanese electronic watches. The opposite of Intersil, Intel released a limited set of templated circuits for computers and sold them at first only in the U.S. market, Intersil focused on custom CMOS circuits with low power consumption and sold them worldwide.

Last remained with Amelco and for twelve years served as Vice President of Technology at Teledyne. In 1982, he founded Hillcrest Press specializing in art books. After leaving Amelco, Roberts led his own business, and in 1973–1987 served as a trustee of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Amelco, after numerous mergers, acquisitions and renaming, became a subsidiary of Microchip Technology.

In 1972, Kleiner and Tom Perkins from Hewlett-Packard founded the venture capital fund Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which has been involved in the creation and/or funding of Amazon.com, Compaq, Genentech, Intuit, Lotus, Macromedia, Netscape, Sun Microsystems, Symantec and dozens of other companies. Kleiner later wrote that his goal was to geographically spread the venture financing.