<p>I’m majoring in EE, and I plan on getting an MBA with My Bachelors. I want to go into business for myself, but what are the profitable businesses for EE?</p>
<p>You can start a microchip company. They don’t call the area between San Francisco and San Jose ‘Silicon’ Valley for nothing. There’s a reason why it’s not called “Software Valley” or “Internet Valley” or even “Computer Valley”, it’s Silicon Valley because of the proliferation of semiconductor startups that were founded in the area, some (like Intel) which have become some of the most important companies in history. </p>
<p>Innovation continues aplenty in the semiconductor industry. If you can found a company that is selling a novel chip design, you can strike it rich. If you can found a company that creates high-tech capital equipment with which to create new chips, you can strike it rich. If you can come up with new electronics that takes advantage of new chips, i.e. an innovative cellphone design or computer design, you can become rich.</p>
<p>But… um… someone should mention that it’s kind of difficult to start your own engineering firm with no engineering experience whatsoever, so if you think you’re gonna found the next Intel right out of the starting gate, you might have another think comin’…</p>
<p>To get a PE (assuming that’s what the OP is going for based on the title), you have to have engineering experience; likewise, for an MBA, most b-schools want some sort of work experience before they admit students (in most cases). Would someone with a few years experience, a PE, and an MBA have enough pull to be successful in raising the many billions needed to set up and run a certified chip fab?</p>
<p>You’d have to be a heck of a fundraiser to be able to do that with just a PE and MBA… Brains of Kilby, hypnotic persuasion of Oprah, and business sense of Trump…</p>
<p>Work for a start-up and cash in on the IPOs.</p>
<p>or can get your own start-up and get venture capitalists to fund it. But to do that, you need some solid work experience like consulting for Mckinsey etc.</p>
<p>If your engineering business involves the design or manufacturing of consumer or industrial products, then it’s unlikely that you need an EE PE. Such engineering work typically falls under the “industrial exemption,” and so a PE license is not normally required. If you were a consultant in this field, then the PE title might look good on your resume and be helpful for marketing purposes, but it probably wouldn’t be necessary from a legal standpoint.</p>
<p>If your engineering business involves the design or construction of electrical systems (usually power systems) for commercial or industrial facilities, then you probably would need an EE PE license. For example, a civil engineering firm might hire an outside EE PE to design and sign off on the electrical system for a new structure. </p>
<p>Since most EEs work with “products” rather than “facilities”, demand for the EE PE is relatively limited. Here in California, for example, there are tens of thousands of electrical engineers, but only a few hundred EE PE candidates per year.</p>
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<p>Uh, not really. The entire Silicon Valley startup environment was basically composed of 2 people tinkering with something and then selling it on an ad-hoc basis and then watching it get big. Apple was basically founded by 2 college dropouts working out of a garage who were tinkering with early computer kits in their spare time. Cisco Systems was founded by a man and a woman who were dating while working at Stanford (after having graduated at Stanford) who tinkered with new networking equipment in order to be able to find a way to send love-letters to each other electronically while they were working. Yahoo was founded by 2 guys who got bored with their Stanford doctoral theses and who were spending more time fooling around with the nascent WWW than with their studies. Google was a direct outgrowth of the research of 2 other Stanford doctoral students, who decided that what they had was so good that they would release it on the public Internet, without (at the time ) any way to generate revenue off of it. The idea of making money through search via targeted advertising came years later. Microsoft was founded by 2 computer hobbyists and college dropouts who simply decided that it would be cool to start writing programming languages for the Altair, one of the first true PC’s. Heck, look at all of the Internet innovation that is happening now - plenty of it being done by people with little real experience beyond just tinkering. </p>
<p>Those are just some of the examples of highly visible and well-branded companies of today. Hundreds of other companies have been founded that deal with non-consumer technologies (and thus not well-known to the public), or were simply acquired by one of the big boys and thus had their name-brands disappear, but nevertheless made millionaires out of their founders. Cisco Systems, for example, has acquired well over 100 networking and electronics startups, making all of their founders extremely wealthy. Many of these companies were founded by people with minimal work experience, but instead were just tinkerers, or were graduate students, etc. Google too is now starting to exert that sort of gravitational pull on the startup environment. In fact, many new software companies today are being founded with the express purpose of being sold off to Google (or one of its competitors such as Yahoo).</p>
<p>None of these guys had much work experience, and they certainly didn’t work for a company like McKinsey. In fact, like I said, many of these people never even graduated from college at all. EE (and even more, so, CS) is a field that is highly highly accepting of quirky people with limited backgrounds but who just like fiddling with technology. I am convinced that this is why the US computer and information technology industries are at the vanguard of innovation. They don’t have the filters that eliminate people who don’t have college degrees or don’t have ‘resume-perfect’ backgrounds. All you need is a really good idea and lots of hard work.</p>
<p>Now, don’t get me wrong. The vast vast majority of these high-tech startups will fail. But the vast majority of ALL new business ventures fail. And if you’re a young person with no family responsibilites, then, really, what’s so bad about starting a company that fails?</p>
<p>Paul Graham wrote a fine essay about the virtues of trying out your own startup when you’re young. He’s talking about Internet startups, but the same principle applies in any field. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.paulgraham.com/hiring.html[/url]”>Paul Graham;
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<p>Who says that you have to raise billions to start your own fab? Most new chip companies nowadays are fabless design companies - meaning that they outsource the manufacturing to one of the chip foundries like TSMC or UMC. All you really have to do is make your own innovative chip design, get a reference design out (probably a computer simulation of what your chip would do), and then try to interest a customer. You don’t need ‘billions’ of dollars in venture capital money. Many of the top semiconductor firms, such as Nvidia (graphics chips in the Sony PS3 and original Xbox), Broadcom (networking chips), ATI (graphics chip in the Xbox360), Rambus, and so forth are all fabless. </p>
<p><a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabless[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabless</a></p>
<p>Now, again, don’t get me wrong. The vast majority of new companies fail. So this is certainly not something appropriate for those who are risk-averse. If all you want is a steady and reliable paycheck, and to be back home watching the 6-o-clock news evening news every day, the startup life is certainly not for you. But the point is, it’s not so impossible to found your own startup and become filthy rich, even if you have minimal work experience. Look at Bill Gates. Look at Steve Jobs. Neither of these guys ever had a real job in their whole lives before starting their companies.</p>
<p>Sakky, I did overlook the fabless design companies. If I recall correctly, the fabless model did Cyrix in as IBM started to market the same chips under their own brand.</p>
<p>Well, no, Cyrix was never really “done in”. It is true that Cyrix had issues with IBM as its foundry partner, with Cyrix signing an agreement allowing IBM to market Cyrix chips under its own brand-name, that didn’t really do Cyrix in. Cyrix got acquired by National Semiconductor. for about $550 million in 1997. Considering that Cyrix was only started in 1988, that means that the founders of Cyrix created more than half-a-billion dollars of market value in only 9 years. I think it’s safe to say that the founders of Cyrix and the initial investors all got very rich of Cyrix. I certainly wouldn’t mind having been one of those founders or initial investors. I’d be very happy to let a company I founded get “done in” if it means that I get to become a multimillionaire in the process.</p>
<p>Like I said, the vast majority of chip companies will never become household names like Intel or Texas Instruments. Most of them will fail. Of those that don’t fail, they will either be solid ongoing ventures, or they will be acquired by somebody. Intel has acquired numerous fabless chip companies. So have many of the other big boys. The process of acquisition makes the founders and initial investors filthy rich.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the point is, the vast majority of chip companies out there are now fabless. I don’t know how many American semiconductor companies actually own their own fabs (not counting small research fabs, I’m talking about the large-scale manufacturing fabs), but I have a feeling that the number is less than 10 - Intel, TI, AMD, Micron, Freescale, IBM, and a few others. But there are literally HUNDREDs of American chip companies out there, the vast majority of them being fabless. Hence, you don’t need to have raised the billions of dollars necessary to buy your own fab. Most new chip companies don’t.</p>
<p>After all, the truth is, fab manufacturing capacity is basically a commodity. Unless you happen to be have huge production schedules such as Intel or TI or any of the other giants, you really don’t need to own your own fab. For most chip companies, it makes far far more economic sense to simply rent fab time from one of the foundries. In fact, companies like TSMC and UMC base their entire business model off of selling fab time to fabless design firms. </p>
<p><a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC</a>
<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Microelectronics_Corporation[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Microelectronics_Corporation</a></p>