People often say that chips are the crown jewels of modern industry.
However, only those who have truly ventured into chip entrepreneurship know that the road to the crown is not a red carpet, but a thorny path shrouded in darkness. You hold the most cutting-edge technology in your hands, yet you tread on the humblest of realities, each step feeling like walking on the edge of a knife.
They are a group of typical “highly educated” individuals—masters and PhDs from Tsinghua, Peking University, Fudan, and overseas returnees from prestigious universities, who have led core module designs in international giants, written millions of lines of code, and run countless simulations. They could have earned a six-figure salary, living comfortably in an office building. But they chose entrepreneurship, diving headfirst into the deep waters of RF, power, and connectivity chips.
Some are working on RF switches, having launched the first domestic product supporting the 7.125GHz frequency band, achieving a switching speed of under 50ns, with performance on par with international giants. On the day the tape-out returned, the team stayed in the lab until dawn, excited like children. But when they delivered the samples to clients, they received a cold response: “Who are you? Do you have any mass production records? Do you have endorsements from major manufacturers?”
No. Not a single one.
Thus, they began to learn to lower their heads. They printed out shipping orders from overseas clients, blacked out the prices, and submitted them like a “credit proof.” Once, twice, ten times… until one day, the client finally stopped asking, “Have you shipped before?” and directly asked, “What price can you offer?”
Only those who have experienced it understand that when a client is willing to discuss prices with you, it means—you have finally been recognized as a “player.”
Others are working on Wi-Fi FEM, having mass-produced low-power products supporting Wi-Fi 6E in 2022, with a noise figure below 2dB and one of the smallest package sizes in the industry. However, no matter how excellent the product is, it cannot withstand an industry-wide inventory clearance. Competitors are selling at a loss, and the price war is fierce. They can only rely on time and reputation, winning clients one by one. Some clients, despite passing tests, ultimately chose unverified alternatives simply because the quote was 3% higher.
There are also those developing fast-charging protocol chips, optimizing handshake speed and standby power consumption for low-power devices like TWS earbuds and smartwatches. The product is ready, but the client says, “We already have suppliers, unless you can offer a 30% discount.” The founder smiles wryly: “We haven’t even tested the board yet; how do you know we aren’t worth that price?”
The competition is brutal, but being able to compete at all is a qualification in itself. They have seen too many peers fall at the stage where they don’t even qualify to “compete.” To penetrate the domestic market, some have even voluntarily offered to supply at a loss. “We won’t make money on this order,” the founder candidly states, “but if the volume stabilizes, there will be opportunities to reduce costs in the future.” He added a condition: monthly demand cannot exceed a certain quantity; beyond that, technical support would be insufficient.
The client laughed, saying they had never seen such an “honest” supplier. Yet it was this honesty that earned them their first small batch order.
There have also been long, dark nights. One night at 11 PM, a module factory owner called, talking for nearly two hours. On the surface, they discussed technology, but in reality, they were probing for bottom prices and extracting competitive product information. When they proposed arranging for actual testing, the other party always deferred with “still under evaluation.” When the call ended, it was pitch black outside, and only one person remained in the room, staring blankly at the computer.
At that moment, he felt he was not an entrepreneur but a cheap information dealer.
This group of people gradually learned to lower their heads. Their past pride, temper, and academic demeanor were all crushed by reality. They could drive three hundred kilometers to debug a project, wait two hours outside a client’s conference room just to seek ten minutes of reporting, or quietly explain after being publicly reprimanded by an engineer for half an hour on a high-speed train.
They once tried to start a business “with dignity.” They rented high-end office spaces, decorated them like listed companies, hired a full team for marketing, branding, and PR, even having the receptionist wear professional attire. What was the result? When clients came, they said, “It looks like a big company,” but hesitated when it came to placing orders: “With such high spending, how long can you survive?”
In contrast, after moving into a renovated house office, cutting all non-core positions, and having the founder personally carry oscilloscopes to clients, they gained trust instead.
“Clients are not afraid of you being small; they are afraid of you being fake,” said one entrepreneur. “They would rather collaborate with a ‘small company’ in a checkered shirt who speaks plainly than gamble their lives with a ‘big company’ in a suit who dazzles with PowerPoint presentations.”
Yet even so, respect remains a luxury.
RF switches, Wi-Fi FEM, protocol chips… most of these products are P2P compatible standard components, and clients only look at prices. If you are not competitive, you won’t even get through the door. Thus, some have turned to making IoT-specific FEM—client needs are fragmented, pain points are clear, and differentiation can be achieved. A chip with a standby power consumption of only 1.5μA was adopted across all models by a smart lock manufacturer; a 0.8mm ultra-small package helped clients save PCB space. Clients began to proactively say, “Your solutions are very thoughtful.”
There is a sense of accomplishment, but the capital market does not buy it. “The market size is too small,” “growth is not fast enough,” “cannot benchmark against Skyworks”—one sentence can bring them back to reality.
Thus, they are forced to return to the most brutal battlefield: the standard RF market. Here, the R&D cycle is the longest, the investment is the highest, and the profit margins are the thinnest. A chip can take three years from project initiation to mass production, burning tens of millions, only to receive a client’s response: “If you can lower the price by another 5%, we will use you.”
The more humble the market, the more it requires a low-price strategy. The harder it is to gain respect and trust in such markets, the only way to open the door to clients is through price. Don’t mention how good the product is or how high the performance is; clients don’t believe it and are too lazy to help you test; the only thing that can attract clients is price.
Recently, a client making routers approached them, saying that a major manufacturer recommended one of their competitors, but ultimately chose not to due to a lack of competitive pricing. Afterwards, they told the client: “No product will be truly quoted before testing; don’t you conduct comparative testing and evaluations?”
No one answered.
Some say that in domestic chip entrepreneurship, those who resemble big companies die faster; those who appear more “down-to-earth” tend to survive longer.
This group of people in checkered shirts do not believe in fate, nor do they put on airs. They only believe that as long as they can still lower their heads and walk, they are not afraid of the high mountains and long roads; as long as they dare to bury their heads in the dust, they will surely wait for the day they can look up and see the light.
A group of highly educated individuals is engaged in humble chip entrepreneurship.They are humble, but they never exit the stage.They are silent, but they have never given up.