Secrets of a techno start-up

Stan Boland became CEO of loss-making Acorn Computers in 1998 and began a restructuring process. This resulted in the company being more narrowly focused and renamed Element 14.

Boland then led a management buy-out of the business in July 1999. In November of the following year, Broadcom bought the company for $600 million, providing a return to the original investors of 32 times their investment.

Stan was vice president and general manager of Broadcom’s DSL business unit until 2002, when he set up Icera, a fabless semi-conductor company, which was sold to Nvidia for $367 million in May 2011.

Here he talks in detail about his experiences as a technology entrepreneur. This is taken from the student-run TELL series.