Thank you to John Roberts’ son, Matt Roberts, for offering the Twitter thread he wrote after his father’s death.
My Dad grew up poor in post war Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales. The house he grew up in was condemned, the neighbourhood was rough. Violence was ever present, he lost most of his adult teeth to fights with other kids who were part of some sort of gang. He shared a story that as a teenager, a kid tried to beat him with a rock as he tried to not fight. “I never wanted to be violent.” he said. “but it took effort to not be. Merthyr was like that.”
He eventually discovered an interest in technology, fixing radios and learning how they worked. He was lucky to become an electrician’s apprentice. It was the beginning of a lifelong journey.
From there he got his first job at Hoover where he won a design award after solving a technical problem with their assembly line. “It was the first time I’d accomplished something and was recognized for it, I loved it.” This brought him to the attention of both his union foreman and the plant manager; the company gave scholarships to university for promising staff. Thanks to those two men, my dad was the first to win one. My dad never forgot this.
“Without that scholarship, I would still be in Wales today.” At Swansea University he focused on electrical engineering specializing in Semiconductors. This was 1964, semiconductors were only 6 years old and he was at the front end of the tech revolution. By 1968 he graduated with his Masters, but he noticed a glass ceiling. His Welsh accent and degree meant that he would never be invited to meet customers or meetings with upper management in England. His career was stalling.
But a Canadian semiconductor company came calling and helped to fast track engineering talent into the country. A few of my dad’s friends had already left, in particular Terry Matthews, so he decided to join them and give it a shot. He emigrated to Canada in 1972. He joined a company named Microsystem Int’t (MIL). I have to write a thread just on them. It’s an amazing story – but my dad only played a small role there. It failed and he next joined Computing Devices Canada and he was bored out of his mind.
“They had this huge bureaucracy that just killed some of the most innovative ideas. I needed a change… I was bored.” So he joined a startup, Mosaid, which some friends from MIL had founded.
It was there he found his entrepreneurial itch.
He was given tons of leash to do what he liked, and was instrumental in a bunch of the design work. He loved it but as the company grew it became bureaucratic. He also discovered that under some new management, he and his colleagues were being shafted, being given options that had no value. “They really didn’t want the staff to share in ownership, they did their best to give us shares that would never be worth anything.”
Vowing to always share equity fairly. He founded a company in 1983 named Calmos. The Cal stood for Calgary. But he was in Ottawa, so why? Because in 1983 the Alberta government was going to build a Semiconductor Fabrication Site (Fab) to diversify their economy and my dad wanted access. Alberta never built the Fab. But the name stuck.
(You have to wonder what Alberta would be today if they’d built that fab…) Calmos was one of the first fabless semiconductor companies in Canada. This was 40 years ago and they helped invent the fabless business model.
All the other semiconductor companies in Canada (Mite, Nortel etc,) owned a Fab – this was trailblazing. Within 2 years, the company was generating over $1.5M in sales and was profitable. John raised the first few rounds of capital.
My dad, never wanting to be in charge, hired a CEO, Adam Chowaniac. This was my Dad’s recipe of never being part of the bureaucracy but staying on the technical side of any company. He believed in hiring professional managers.
In December of 2007, the Computer History Museum celebrated the 25th Anniversary of the Commodore 64. On Stage was:
- Jack Tramiel, who ran Commodore,
- Bill Lowe, who invented the IBM PC,
- Steve Wozniak, who invented the Apple Computer and
- Adam Chowaniac, a Canadian
In 1989 Calmos was sold to Newbridge Networks (for about $20M of pre-IPO stock) and my dad was faced with a dilemma. He didn’t know what to do after he’d made money and he didn’t want to work for someone else. (He stayed at Newbridge for about a year)
My dad joined numerous Boards including the NRC-CNRC and CMC Microsystems and helped start an Semiconductor industry group called Strategic Microelectronic Consortium… SMC. He became its first CEO. Importantly, it also funded startups.
My dad who hadn’t enjoyed raising money, was now able to give it out… It was a huge success, he gave PMC-Sierra $1.5M and $1M dollars to Genesis Microsystems early in their life cycles, both of which became billion-dollar companies
“With those returns, I could have been a VC” he once told me. But it never really interested him. He continued to angel invest but preferred to be an entrepreneur. So in 1995 he left the SMC to co-found SiGe Microsystems.
SiGe was at the cutting edge of a new type of chip, Silicon Germanium (hence SiGe). The NRC had been working on the technology for a decade and needed someone to commercialize it. My Dad took that opportunity. You’ve never heard of them.
My Dad spun out another company from SiGE in 1998, SiGEM (marketing was never my Dad’s strong suit). He focused on building GPS modules (hence the M at the end of it).
He took SiGEM public on the TSX, bought a few companies, handed off the CEO role and became Chairman before leaving in 2001. The company was briefly worth $900M during the dot-com period. The company went private in 2003 and today is known as Mobile Knowledge.
He spent 2002-2008 trying to figure out what technology to work on next. When most people would have retired, he bounced around multiple ideas. And at age 65, he co-founded what has turned out to be his last and quite possibly most successful company.
My Dad founded GaNSystems in 2008, named for you guessed it, Gallium Nitride Semiconductors. John developed the underlying technology they’re using today, with his name on over a dozen of their patents. GaN is often labeled as one of Canada’s leading “Cleantech” Companies. They’ve raised over $100M in Venture Capital, including investors such as BMW and Toyota.
But Electric Cars are just one of the applications of their technologies. GaN semiconductors will be revolutionary. People are now discovering just how important GaN technology will be.
GaN is a Canadian leader in this space. They’ve shipped over 20 million chips.
In 2017 my dad “retired.”Actually he started working on another technology – high end speakers.
But he started suffering from kidney issues and by mid last year it became clear that he couldn’t continue. He passed away this past Saturday, May 15 2021. My Dad was an incredible guy.
He grew up poor, worked hard, caught some lucky breaks and took risks – culminating in some successful companies. He always believed that the biggest opportunity that came his way was getting the scholarship to attend university. So in his honour we are establishing the John Roberts Memorial Bursary. I’m sure he’d be happy to know that we’ll be helping the next generation of engineers who want to bring technology out of the lab.
If you’d like to donate, I would be grateful.