Fire in the Belly: Building a World-leading High-tech Company from Scratch in Tumultuous Times

Jerry D. Neal · Jerry Bledsoe

Jan 2020 · Scruffy City Press

Ebook

403

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Eligible

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About this ebook

When Bill Pratt and Powell Seymour got laid off from their technology jobs in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1991, they had no idea that they were about to become leaders of a revolution in electronic communications. They did know that they wanted to start their own company, although they had no means to fund it. They asked their friend Jerry Neal to leave his job at the same company and join them to raise money and market their products. Those products numbered only seven at the time, and they could fit in a small matchbox with plenty of room to spare. But they were unlike any other products. Bill Pratt had designed the first radio frequency integrated circuits, the semiconductor chips that would make the cell-phone phenomenon possible. Within a year of starting the company, Pratt had designed another chip, the first power amplifier using an exotic technology that many considered unreliable and impossible to commercialize. Although the chip failed at first, it became a company builder. Now more than half of the cell phones made in the world contain power amplifiers made by RF Micro Devices of Greensboro, the world's leading supplier. The company has plants and offices around the world, and has broadened its reach into every aspect of wireless electronic communications. Jerry Neal's revealing, entertaining, often funny account of how this came about is much more than a story of one company's beginnings. It's a wild ride through the technology boom of the 1990s, at the peak of which, just nine years after its founding, RF Micro Devices had a market value of $16 billion, twice that of its technology partner, the huge, long-established defense contractor TRW. Fire in the Belly should be a handbook for entrepreneurs and a textbook for college business majors.

About the author

Jerry D. Neal is Co-Founder and former Executive Vice President of Strategic Development for RF Micro Devices, from which he retired in 2012.

As a co-founder of RF Micro Devices, he worked to secure the initial funding for the new venture. During his twenty-one year career at RF Micro his primary focus was in the area of strategic development to ensure the continuing growth of the company.

He plays an active role in both the business and education communities, having served on the board of directors at semiconductor companies including Jazz Semiconductor and Peregrine Semiconductor, as well as the Board of Visitors at the Babcock Graduate School of Management at Wake Forest University. He regularly speaks to civic organizations and universities desiring to hear the RF Micro Devices story and he has a program for educating and entertaining audiences by portraying the father of wireless communications, Guglielmo Marconi.

In addition to professional associations, he and his wife, Linda, are involved in many philanthropic activities. Their primary endowment is for research in the Infectious Disease Department at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, the hospital where he also serves as a member of the ALSAC Leadership Council. Closer to home, he serves on the Board of Directors of Victory Junction, a year-round medical camp established in Randleman, North Carolina, where children with chronic or life-threatening illnesses and their families can enjoy medically sound and physically safe camping experiences. In addition to the Neal Fellowship at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Linda and Jerry Neal have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for children's charities over the years.

Jerry enjoys several hobbies including the restoration of rare antique tractors as well as the restoration of vintage electronic test equipment and radios. His restored tractors are displayed in a museum which is open to the public, the Neal Agricultural and Industrial Museum.

In 2001 he was awarded the Doctor of Business Management Degree from Southern Wesleyan University.

In addition to Fire in the Belly, he also authored Built on a Rock: A Memoir of Faith, Family and Place (2003) with Jerry Bledsoe.

Jerry Bledsoe was born in Danville, VA, and grew up in Thomasville, N.C. After three years in the Army he became a newspaper reporter and for more than 20 years was a feature columnist in Greensboro and Charlotte. He was a contributing editor to Esquire when he began writing books. His seventh book, Bitter Blood, became a New York Times #1 bestseller and was made into a CBS mini-series. He has published over twenty books. He and his wife, Linda, live near Asheboro, NC.

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