Curtis Ling: Founding to post-IPO: One Perspective on Technology Entrepreneurship and Fabless Design

In the ultracompetitive world of technology startups, what makes the difference between success and failure? What are some of the key factors to creating a profitable, scalable company in the fabless semiconductor space and taking it beyond an IPO? Though Curtis Ling does not intend to provide definitive answers to these complex questions, he will give you a close look at how one fabless company, MaxLinear, started from scratch in 2003, defined and developed its first successful products, became profitable and went IPO six years later with 1.5 rounds of venture funding, and has since continued to innovate and grow in a challenging business environment. He will cover topics such as:

Precursors leading to starting a technology company,
The crucial interaction between engineering and marketing in defining products,
Technical challenges in integrating broadband communication receivers, and
Business challenges of scaling a company beyond a tight-knit founding team.
Dr. Curtis Ling co-founded MaxLinear in 2003 with seven colleagues. He has served as Chief Technical Officer since April 2006. Today, MaxLinear employs more than 200 people, and has offices across Asia and Europe. The company builds highly integrated RF mixed-signal broadband communications systems on a single chip. Their products are found in cable and set top boxes, digital televisions, cell phones, cable modems, computers, and cars.

Before founding MaxLinear, Dr. Ling served as a principal engineer at Silicon Wave, Inc. from 1999 to 2003, and from 1993 to 1999, he served as a professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Dr. Ling received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.