Ray Zinn
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Ray Zinn

Business & Careers
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Cowboy, gymnast, “vertically challenged” hurdle track star, inventor of industry-wide chip manufacturing inventions, and the founder of Micrel Corporation. Ray Zinn’s approach to life and business has led to fundamental evolutions in microchip technology that shrank mainframe computer into smart phones. He went against Silicon Valley’s addiction to venture capital and built an international microchip enterprise without venture investors. He suddenly became legally blind mere days before his company was to go public, yet he remained at Micrel’s helm two decades later (37 total years, making Zinn the longest serving CEO in Silicon Valley). Zinn is the founder and the recently retired CEO of Micrel. Zinn funded the Silicon Valley microchip design and manufacturing company in 1978. Micrel is one of the few integrated (design, manufacturing and testing) chip companies, and one of the very few that keeps its fabrication operations in the United States. Zinn is credited with conceptualizing the wafer stepper, and selling it to Texas Instruments before it had even been designed. Forward looking at its time, the wafer stepper is now a standard piece of equipment in every chip manufacturing facility around the globe. Ray Zinn’s philosophy on people, servant leadership, humanistic management and the ethics of corporate culture are credited with Micrel’s nearly unbroken profitability (only one unprofitable year out of 37, and that one being in the wake of the dot-com implosion). Zinn’s Tough Things First will be a “must read” in Silicon Valley and every tech hub around the world. Ray Zinn is covered extensively on the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Zinn
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