Mr. L.J. Sevin

Born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he attended parochial schools in Baton Rouge through high school. He served in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War, which is where he became interested in electronics. He attended LSU earning his B.S. degree in 1957 and his M.S. degree in 1959; both in Electrical Engineering. He was Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Mostek Corporation from March 1969 to December 1980. Mostek was a leader in technology, having one of the broadest and most advanced product lines in the manufacture of integrated circuits and electronic subsystems. After college, he began his career at Texas Instruments where he was involved in technical development in the fields of Metal Oxide Semiconductor (MOS) integrated circuits, magnetic film memories and opto-electronics. He, along with other ex-employees of Texas Instruments co-founded Mostek Corporation in 1969. Initially their products were manufactured in Worcester, Massachusetts; however, by 1974 most of the manufacturing was done in the Carrollton, Texas facility on Crosby Road. As a co-founder and innovative leader he emphasized state-of-the-art products manufactured with a basic Metal Oxide Semiconductor (MOS) process and includes semiconductor memories, single-chip microcomputers, and integrated circuits used in the communications field. Mostek's innovations have been characterized as forming a significant basis for what many respected sources describe as the next industrial revolution. Not a single product manufactured by Mostek today was even in the design stage in 1970. He led the corporation to national and international status with sales reaching the half-billion dollar level. At its peak in the late 1970s, Mostek held an 85% market share of the dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) memory chip market worldwide, until being eclipsed by Japanese DRAM manufacturers who offered equivalent chips at lower prices by dumping memory on the market. In 1979, soon after its market peak, Mostek was purchased by United Technologies Corporation for $345M. The author of a notable book on field effect transistors, he holds several patents in semiconductor technology. He was a Director of the Institute of Technology at Southern Methodist University from 1974-76 and served on the Board of Directors of the Bulova Watch Company from 1976-79. He serves on the Trade Policy Committee of the Semiconductor Industry Association Board of Directors. He has been a spokesman for the semiconductor industry before the House of Ways and Means Committee and the International Trade commission regarding foreign trade barriers. As a contemporary "industrial entrepreneur" in the high technology sector, he has gained a reputation equaled by few for engineering excellence, and for honesty and integrity in the business and financial community. He is an Advisor and Strategic Partner at CenterPoint Ventures and an Advisor and Strategic Partner at three CenterPoint funds. He was a Founding Partner and General Partner at the venture capital firm, Sevin Rosen Funds (SRF), which he co-founded in August 1981 with Ben Rosen. SRF was a Founding Investor in the financing of Citrix, Cypress Semiconductor, Electronic Arts, Lotus Development Corporation, Silicon Graphics, and Vitesse Semiconductor. SRF's first major success was its 1982 investment in Compaq which went public shortly thereafter.