How a Singaporean became a billionaire by selling microchips

Swee Ann Teo is a Singaporean geek with a restless streak.

Coming from a middle-class family, he owned an old Apple II – one of the world’s first mainstream personal computers.

As an eight-year-old in the 1980s, he obsessed over its Z-80 mircroprocessor and wrote his first program on the machine until it broke down.

“That experience led me to understand that I loved building things,” he told Tech in Asia in an exclusive email interview.

Today, that lifelong obsession has turned the 45-year-old into a billionaire. Like Wong Hoo Sim, the Singaporean who made a fortune by inventing the Sound Blaster sound card, Teo is in the hardware business.

But unlike Sim, who shuttled between Silicon Valley and Singapore, he’s been plying his trade in China.

Betting his chips

Teo’s Shanghai-headquartered company, Espressif Systems, is a leader in wireless- and bluetooth-enabled “systems on a chip” – essentially computers that are the size of a coin. “We sell chips and modules. That’s it,” he said.

These chips, which first took off among hobbyist hardware hackers, serve a grand goal. They can turn any dumb device into smart gadgets – think speakers, light bulbs, and switches that can be controlled using mobile phones.

By betting on the internet of things – a trend of interconnected computers being embedded into the objects people use everyday – and serving a passionate community well, Espressif has transformed into a company that’s worth over US$2 billion (on a well-above-the-norm price-to-earnings ratio of around 100), with Teo owning about 44% of it.

Unlike many tech unicorns these days, Espressif is both growing and profitable. It has kept its sales and marketing costs down by relying on word-of-mouth and online distribution.

Before getting into the startup game, Teo seemed set for a comfortable corporate career. After studying at Hwa Chong Junior College, a top institution in Singapore, he graduated with an engineering degree from the National University of Singapore in 1999.

In the wilderness for seven years

Taking the hobbyist world by storm

Ringing the bell

Look to China, not Southeast Asia