Leadership Profile: Sass Somekh (Part 3)

Sass continues his discussion of his early career. Of note is his constant involvement in innovation, from Bell Labs to Intel he was consistently working on developing emerging technologies which would come to dominate the marketplace. His talent for building new product based on new technologies, and scaling them into market leading businesses is at the heart of Applied Materials’ tremendous growth between 1980 and 2000.

SM: You were working on the manufacturing side of Intel? SS: It was technology development and technology transfer to manufacturing. Bell Labs was really just a research place, an outstanding research place, but they did not do a lot of manufacturing. There we worked on x-ray lithography. We developed etching technology at Bell Labs during this process, so I came to Intel to introduce this technology within the company.

Two years later, three of us who were originally with Bell Labs, came together at Applied Materials to turn into production an invention one of us had made at Bell Labs. We joined Applied Materials in 1980. It was a $50 million company with one product line. By the year 2000 Applied was a $10 billion company, and the original product line was still worth $50 million. The rest of the products are things we developed at Applied. That was really an incredible era for us … the semiconductor equipment industry was growing very fast and we were developing products left and right, and capturing market share in that growing market.

SM: Tell us a bit more about that journey … what were some milestones? SS: We came in 1980, and the first product we worked on was an etch product. We introduced it a year later, and within the year it became a success. We then developed a CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition) product, and these (etch and CVD) became the two major products for applied.

At that point having the three of us work together to develop these products, as well as trying to run the business was too much. I took a group of ten people and moved to a new building and developed the PVD (Physical Vapor Deposition) for Applied. We introduced it in 1990, and today it does about $500 million per year for Applied, and owns about 80% market share.

At some point I became responsible for all of the products at Applied. David Wang, the third person who came with us from Bell Labs, became responsible for marketing and selling. Dan Maydan became the President of Applied.

The three of us covered all aspects of the company, and we worked together in the Office of the President together with the CFO of the company. At that point I became responsible for all products, and launched development into another product called CMP (Chemical Mechanical Planarization). Today this owns 80% market share, and is also big business for Applied.

[to be continued]

[Part 2]
[Part 1]

This segment is part 3 in the series : Leadership Profile: Sass Somekh
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