October 1999 Meeting

 A Rational Business Startup Model

The Optical Society of San Diego is pleased to present Dr. Milton Chang at our October dinner meeting. The speaker will share his experience in starting high-tech companies using a low-risk startup model. Most technical people can use this approach to start a company that begins with a modest initial goal and grows the business over time. As the company builds infrastructure and the individuals gain experience, the ability to pursue big opportunities comes naturally. The result is more likely to be a company with a longer term vision, and with the management team retaining more of the ownership.

Biography: Milton Chang is Chairman of New Focus and of Arcturus Engineering, and also serves on the Boards of Agility Communications, Euphonix, Iridex, Gadzoox Networks, LightConnect, Lightwave Electronics, and Optical Micro-machines; all of which he participated in founding as an angel investor. He earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering with Highest Honors from the University of Illinois, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology. He worked briefly as a research engineer before joining Newport Corporation, then a startup company. He became its president and took the company public in 1983. Dr. Chang is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America and of the Laser Institute of America, a Senior Member of IEEE LEOS and serves on its Board of Governors. He writes monthly business columns for Laser Focus World and Photonics Spectra.

 

OSSD October Meeting Review:

Milton Chang Explains How to Start Your Own Business
by Ed Miles

Milton Chang spoke at the October meeting of the Optical Society of San Diego. The title of his talk was "A Rational Start-up Model." In this talk he discussed how to start an optics company (and how not to). There was much interest in the talk, and attendance was high. Dr. Chang was both a very good speaker and had many interesting things to say. He is also dedicated to giving back to the optics community, as evidenced by his taking time out of his busy schedule to speak at our OSSD meeting.

My first encounter with Milton Chang was looking through the Newport catalog in the early days, and dreaming about all the neat experiments I could do if only I had that stage of page 34. I'm sure this experience is shared by many in the optics field. Dr Chang was president of Newport for some number of years and led it to be one of the premier optics companies. Then he became involved in funding start up companies. A few years after leaving Newport, Dr. Change founded New Focus. New Focus has steadily grown, and was the example often used in his talk.

The talk itself was extremely interesting. It covered growing the company from the first conception of the idea, through angel investors and venture capital, ending up with IPOs. In addition to the funding side of the startups, Dr. Chang covered the business aspect of the process. Here he discussed the need for setting up an efficient infrastructure (accounting, purchasing, manufacturing) so that when the big break comes, your company will be ready for it. Much of the content of Dr. Chang's talk has been published in his monthly Photonics Spectra business column. Some of the article's are available at New Focus's website. After the talk, Dr Chang stayed quite awhile to answer questions.

Special thanks to Rhonda Mason, who arranged for Milton Chang's visit.