Fairchild Semiconductor Founding

Eight engineers quit Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in 1957 because its founder, Nobel laureate William Shockley, was abrasive and paranoid to the point of being nearly unmanageable. They wanted to start their own company but had no personal capital and no existing playbook for funding something like this — banks didn't lend to unproven engineers with no product, and there was no venture capital industry yet to call. Arthur Rock, then a young banker, spent weeks pitching roughly 35 existing corporations to back the group as a new subsidiary. All 35 passed. Fairchild Camera and Instrument finally agreed, fronting the capital in exchange for the right to buy the whole new company outright later if it succeeded.