ARM founder sees startups hustling in hard times

A visit with ARM in Silicon Valley

ARM’s current management recently invited Saxby to a Q&A session with the 250 members of ARM’s Silicon Valley office. “I came out feeling great--that these kids were just as good as we were,” he said.

“We are very much more global than we were, ARM has a lot more partners in every dimension than it used to have, more employees and more things to be concerned about,” he said. “The need for partnership today is greater than ever because the world is more complex and costly--you have to work with more players to get the job done,” he added.

Saxby talked about the historical importance of ARM’s “leading teaching customers” like Nokia that first used ARM in cellphones and Nintendo that put it in its handheld Gameboy Advance. There were failures too, he reminded them, like the 3DO game console and the Apple Newton.

“We nearly went bankrupt because many of the first customers’ products were failures--it took a very long time for royalties to come but we believed in ourselves,” said Saxby, who served as ARM’s first chief executive from 1991-2001, leaving ARM as chairman in 2006.

“The company has done very well since my retirement and that’s a credit to people like [current CEO] Warren East,” he said. “You need different players at different stages, and for this stage the team is very strong,” he added.

When not working with new startup’s Saxby also acts visiting professor at his former university in Liverpool, teaching on the business of engineering. “I am working in practice less hours than I used to, so I get more time for skiing and playing tennis—really, I am speeding up,” he said.

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