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Andy Grove was originally from Budapest, Hungary. He left after a Soviet invasion in 1956. He landed in New York in a refugee boat. He had only $20 when he first arrived in America. He graduated from college. He paid for college by being a waiter. He graduated with a degree in chemical engineering.
After college Grove went to work for Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore. These two men were the founders of Intel, a company who makes processors. By 1976 Grove became COO of Intel. Intel’s sales were at a low. Grove made a campaign called “Operation Crush.” He made a goal; it was to get 2,000 new customers by the end of one year. He beat this goal by 500 customers. One of those customers was IBM. IBM asked for the new Intel 8088 processor for their new IBM PC. With Intel’s new processor, IBM’s sales skyrocketed.
Though Grove had many good years with Intel, there were also bad ones. The biggest problem was the Japanese were stealing from Intel’s ideas or making new processors and selling them at really low prices. This campaign was to wipe out US rivals totally. One of these Japanese companies was called Advanced Micro Devices or AMD. AMD and Intel have gone to court many times to try to destroy one another’s company. They still compete today. AMD has become a well respect company and sells inexpensive microprocessors.
After many years of battling Grove still came one top. AMD only took about 10% of processor sales. Grove later went on to teach at Stanford’s business schools. He was teaching high-tech strategic management. He also wrote three books, which included “High Output Management”, “One-on-one with Andy Grove”, and “Only the Paranoid Survive.”
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