Bill Gates started his business at 19, Steve Jobs at 21, and Jeff Bezos and Jensen Huang were 30 when they founded what are now the four most valuable tech companies in the world.
The most precious company at present, however, was founded by Morris Chang at the age of 55.
No one has ever been able to start a company with a market value like TSMC in their middle to late years.
Morris Chang reinvented his career in middle age and then revolutionized the semiconductor industry.
01
Middle age is not a crisis but a new peak in one’s career.
He did not let his age limit his career development; on the contrary, his age contributed to his achievements.
It is proven that among entrepreneurs, middle-aged people are more common and more effective than younger ones.
Morris Chang is a prime example of a middle-aged entrepreneur demonstrating this extraordinary talent.
Morris Chang talked about moving to Taiwan after working in the United States for 30 years with one determination: “I want to build a strong semiconductor company.”
The company he established was entirely different from semiconductor companies at that time.
TSMC itself does not design or sell chips, which was unheard of before TSMC’s emergence.
Back then, semiconductor companies produced their own designed chips.
Chang’s radical idea for a strong semiconductor company was to exclusively manufacture chips designed by clients, not designing or selling its chips, avoiding competition with customers.
This way, chip companies do not have to worry about running their wafer fabs.
This innovative business model behind wafer foundry services completely turned the semiconductor industry around, making TSMC an indispensable part of the global economy.
TSMC is the most reliant yet least known company to Americans, and Morris Chang is not a household name, but he has shaped the chip industry over the past 70 years and continues to play a crucial role. No one is more influential than him.
02
Work vs. Life
Asked about the lessons from his mid-life entrepreneurial journey and why it’s never too late to try new things, he shared his thoughts on why he decided to start a new company when he could have stopped working.
Only someone with his experience and expertise could execute the plan he designed for TSMC.
Chang said, “I couldn’t have done it any sooner. I don’t think anyone could have. Because I was the first.”
They say you should balance life and work. When I was their age, I didn’t even know the term work-life balance. To me, at that age, without work, there was no life.
In 1983, Chang left his position at TI and was almost immediately hired as the president of General Instrument. He soon realized it was a “big mistake” and “completely unsuitable,” leaving after a year.
Almost 54, he had no clue what to do next.
He knew he could get another job and venture capitalists were approaching him. If not for the call from Taiwan, he might have accepted other offers. But he could wait for a better opportunity.
Chang said he wouldn’t have risked moving to Taiwan if his finances were unstable.
He was not pursuing vast wealth, just “financial security.”
For a corporate executive in the mid-1980s, financial security meant an annual salary of $200,000 after taxes.
03
A Date with Destiny
Three years later, when K.T. Li approached him again, Chang’s circumstances had changed.
He exercised stock options worth millions of dollars and bought tax-exempt municipal bonds. The interest from these bonds was enough for financial security at his standard of living.
Once he achieved that goal, he was ready to pursue another one.
Moving to Taiwan was like a “date with destiny” for him, but nothing about TSMC was predestined.
Chang said, “I couldn’t be sure if Taiwan would allow me to build a great semiconductor company, but the possibility was there, and it was the only one for me. That’s why I moved to Taiwan.”
He had spent most of his career in Texas and thought he would retire in the U.S. after living in Taiwan for 15 years. That was almost 40 years ago.
When Chang decided to move to a new land, he had 30 years of industry experience.
He understood semiconductors better than almost anyone on the planet and more than anyone in Taiwan.
Just starting at the Industrial Technology Research Institute, K.T. Li called him into his office and gave him a second job.
Chang said, “He thought I should start a semiconductor company in Taiwan, so I founded TSMC.”
When he sat down to consider what business model TSMC should adopt, he first identified what was not possible.
Chang said, “I immediately realized that this company could not become the kind of great company I wanted to build at TI or General Instrument.”
TI controlled every aspect of chip manufacturing, but the work Chang did at TI could not be replicated in Taiwan.
The only way he could establish a great company in his new home was to create a completely new type of company with a business model that leveraged Taiwan’s strengths and mitigated its weaknesses.
Chang believed Taiwan had a specific advantage in the chip supply chain. The Industrial Technology Research Institute, where he was working, had been conducting semiconductor experiments for ten years.
When Chang reviewed a decade of data from the institute, he was pleasantly surprised by the yield of working chips per wafer in Taiwan, which was nearly twice that of the U.S. at the time.
Chang knew his company couldn’t compete with Silicon Valley in designing, selling, or marketing chips. However, he believed the company that would become TSMC had one possible competitive advantage: manufacturing chips.
04
Real Men
During his year at General Instrument, semiconductor entrepreneur Gordon Campbell visited him, planting the seed of focusing purely on chip manufacturing.
Campbell was well aware of the pains and inefficiencies of building and running a wafer fab.
He believed new companies should only design chips and outsource manufacturing. For some in the industry, this was unimaginable.
There’s a saying in the industry, “Real men own fabs,” but this man believed the future belonged to those without fabs.
Chang said, “TSMC was an innovation in ‘business model.’ I think older individuals might be better suited for this kind of innovation than younger ones.”
The idea of building TSMC also came from his long career and personal philosophy.
He believed in “being a partner to clients,” a founding principle from 1987 that remains the cornerstone of the business. TSMC states that enabling clients to succeed has always been key to the company’s success.
Today, hundreds of clients, including Apple and Nvidia, are among the few companies with a market value exceeding TSMC’s.
The chips TSMC manufactures for Apple’s iPhone, iPad, and Mac computers account for a quarter of its net revenue.
Nvidia is often called a chipmaker, which is strange because Nvidia does not manufacture chips; TSMC does.
The global demand for chips has pushed TSMC’s value to unprecedented heights.
Over the past five years, the company’s market value has nearly tripled, with Chang’s approximately 0.5% stake now worth around $3.5 billion.
He said, “I didn’t return to Taiwan for the money. I own very little of the company I founded. However, I became wealthy because a small stake multiplied by a large number becomes a wealth.”
05
Old Soldiers Never Die
He mentioned that when he returned to Taiwan in 1985, he felt the pinnacle of success was building a great company. A slightly lesser success would be at least doing something he loved and wanted to do. He said he happened to achieve the peak of success he envisioned.
Asked about how he views “success” after building an extraordinary company, Chang said he had retired and quoted General MacArthur’s 1951 farewell speech to Congress: “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.”
He said, “I am an old soldier. I will not die, but I will gradually fade away.”
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