Philippine Business Magazine: Volume 9 No. 3 - Visions
Engineer, Entrepreneur
By Pamela Sio

When the PC was yet to be made available and accessible to the ordinary man, a Filipino engineer was racing with the best of them to produce the kind of computer we use and heavily rely on today. In 1972, four years after Intel was born and some years before IBM came out with its first PC, Diosdado “Dado” Banatao completed a masters degree in electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford University.

Innovations attributed to Dado Banatao

• First single-chip, 16-bit microprocessor-based calculator (1976) • First single-chip MicroVAX for digital equipment • First 10-Mbit Ethernet CMOS with silicon coupler data-link control and transreceiver chip (early 1980s) • First system logic chip set for the PC- XT and the PC-AT (1984-85) • First enhanced graphics adapter chip set (1985) • Pioneered the local bus concept for the PC (1989) • First Windows graphical user- interface accelerator chip (1990)

Source: UPSIDE Today (December 1997)

As an engineer, designer, and innovator, Dado worked with some of the companies that developed many of the “firsts” in the semi-conductor industry and in consumer electronics. Many “firsts” have likewise been credited to him. One of these is the semiconductor industry’s first single-chip graphical user interface accelerator that significantly improved the PC’s performance. It is an innovation still found in nine out of ten PC motherboards today.

As an entrepreneur, Dado was even more tireless in his pursuits. He recognized that the risk of failure was incredibly high in Silicon Valley, and that only one of out of ten enterprises started is a sure success. He jokingly describes technology entrepreneurs as “suicidal” because they face such high-failure rates. In any case, Dado was more than certain about the next step he wanted to make, and after three months of convincing his wife that this was the right thing to do, his first company was born.

With the list of very successful companies he helped co-found, that first try seems to have been Dado’s only failure. For instance, he helped establish Chips & Technologies in 1985, a company whose graphics chips set saw US$12 million in sales after only a quarter in the market. Intel bought the company in 1996 for a reported US$300 million. His next company, S3, had a US$30 million IPO in 1993.

Yet Dado was still not satisfied. He took some of his wealth and began another round of successes as a venture capitalist – the role he now enjoys and actively plays, as he wants to help build up companies developing the next wave of technological innovations. His current VC company, Tallwood Venture Capital, was set up with his own funds of US$50 million with plans to invest an additional US$200 million. The firm’s current portfolio of 17 companies highlights its investment vision – a focus on communications and technology-intensive life science companies.

Indeed, Dado, 56, still has his sights set high. Not bad for someone who hailed from a simple barrio that had no running water or electricity in Iguig, Cagayan. He highlights the importance of education in his success. “Even when I was in college in Mapua, I just worked hard. I was so motivated in learning. I focused myself.” It is a lesson that he shares with his three children who all value education just like him.

Rey, his eldest son, is just about to finish doctoral studies in Bio-informatics; Desi, his second, is likewise pursuing doctoral studies in Electrical Engineering after finishing a degree in Material Science; while Tala, his youngest, is set to finish Management at University of California in Berkeley.

Education is also the means by which he sees he can help the Philippines. “The help I am giving right now to the country is more on advising industries and spending some money for education. I don’t think we have enough teachers here who really understand state-of-the-art technologies, technologies that you can put out there, embed in a product and compete today against US, Japan, and other developed countries. I believe that we should send a lot of engineers or scientists to the US or to other developed countries. Let them stay there, be productive, and learn the creation of technology-based products. I’m spending money training professors from here to go to Silicon Valley and bringing them back. I’m not just talk. I make sure that I do what I say to help the country. Luckily, I have the means to do that.”

The man who originally wanted to be a pilot has indeed soared and reached great heights. Even as he still is excitedly involved in the creation of products and companies, Dado now hopes for more time to fly. “The few times that I go up there, I thoroughly enjoy it. It’s good therapy. It’s very intense.” Does he also know how to fly the private jet he owns? He smiles. “Not yet. I will learn how to do that soon.”