Growth
Supersize it
How Steve Tirado overcame the challenges of rapid growth to take Silicon Image from good idea to industry leader
By Matt McClellan
Smart Business Northern California | September 2008
Page 1 of 4
Every company has goals. Your job, as CEO, is to make sure that
your employees’ goals match up with your company’s goals.
Steve Tirado, president and CEO of Silicon Image Inc., says
that process of getting alignment is the difference between
good companies and great companies.
“In Silicon Valley, everybody is smart,” Tirado says. “Just like
graduate school, you walk into the classroom and say, ‘With
enough time, everybody can get an A.’ What differentiates the class
is you get a limited amount of time. So the people who can organize fastest under pressure and learn the material better than the
others, they kind of float to the top.
“For me, business is no different. If you give your competitors
enough time, they’ve got a lot of smart people, so they’ll eventually figure out what you’re doing and do it just as well.
“Our advantage is to keep our team very focused on what we
have to do and stay very highly aligned as a company. That allows
you to execute just a bit better, and that’s all it takes to have an
edge.”
Once Tirado found that edge, he kept it. When he joined Silicon
Image, it was a $20 million operation with 40 employees and a
great idea. Silicon Image invented the high-definition multimedia
interface (HDMI) and creates the semiconductor architecture for
digital content distribution through HDMI, DVI and SATA interfaces. If you’ve ever hooked up any digital device to your high-definition TV or personal computer, you’ve probably used their products. Tirado realized that while having a great product was a good
start, companies don’t rise to prominence solely on the strength of
their product.
Today, Tirado’s HDMI giant has more than 640 employees and
earned 2007 revenue of $321 million. Here are his keys to taking a
growing company to the next level.
