The man who is the best at selling companies, he sold his shares and was worth 100 billion: Always identify where you can win. Huang Minqi, chairman of Hanmin Technology, won the 13th Pan Wenyuan Award. He is an important promoter of Taiwan's semiconductor equipment industry. He

The man who is the best at selling companies, he sold his shares and was worth 100 billion: Always identify where you can win

Huang Minqi, chairman of Hanmin Technology, won the 13th Pan Wenyuan Award and is an important promoter of Taiwan's semiconductor equipment industry. He sold Hanweike, which had a capital of only 700 million yuan, to a large Dutch company for 1,410 yuan per share, earning him the title of "the boss who is best at selling companies."

He is the man who is best at selling companies in Taiwan!

The "Pan Wenyuan Award", which symbolizes the highest honor in Taiwan's technology industry, was awarded on November 28. This year's winner is Huang Minqi, chairman of Hanmin Technology. Former TSMC chairman Zhang Zhongmou also won the award.

"What he did was something I never dared to think about before. When we bought the most expensive equipment, we never thought Hanmin Technology could make it," said Shi Qintai, chairman of the Pan Wenyuan Cultural and Educational Foundation and former chairman of the Industrial Research Institute. explain. The name

sounds a bit strange, but it is actually the largest individual shareholder of Hanweike, which set a record for the amount of foreign acquisitions of Taiwanese companies in 2016.

3 years ago, Huang Minqi sold Hanweike, a post-shareholding company with a capital of only 700 million yuan but a stock price second only to Largan Light, to a Dutch semiconductor equipment giant at a high price of 1,410 yuan per share and a total price of 100 billion yuan. Factory ASML, so he is called "the boss who is the best at selling the company."

Huang Minqi, who has never accepted an exclusive interview, also spoke publicly for the first time after winning the award about how he entered the semiconductor equipment field dominated by Europe, the United States and Japan, and the reasons why he sold Hanweike that year. The following is an oral summary of Huang Minqi:

I have only been an employee for 11 months, but I have been the chairman for nearly 50 years.

I graduated from Jiaotong University. When I was a senior, we had to go to the laboratory to make transistors before we could graduate. Later, I found that most people can graduate without finishing.

When doing this experiment, you will come into contact with semiconductor equipment. The school let us know that these equipment are very expensive and amazing, and are said to be a sacred field. So after graduation, I felt like I was attracted by a magnet. I had an interest in semiconductor equipment that I couldn’t even describe, and I felt that my destination was there.

After I was discharged from the army, I found a job selling semiconductor equipment, one of which was an electron microscope. Having said that, although I have only worked outside for 11 months in my life, in addition, I have been the chairman of the board for 40 or 50 years my whole life. It is also because of this that the company does not run well because it does not know the mood of its employees. (Everyone laughs)

I founded the company in 1977. In fact, I was very hesitant when I started to make semiconductor equipment! At that time, I always thought that Taiwan Semiconductor would... (get up), and I was really right about this.

At that time, Hu Dinghua was my teacher in my senior year. I knew that he had been busy establishing the Industrial Research Institute (investing in semiconductor research and development), so I felt that semiconductors should have a chance to come out.

I tell a story. In 1977 and 1978, there was a major equipment manufacturer "GCA" in the semiconductor industry, which mainly produced steppers (photolithography machines), sputters ( sputtering ) and many other equipment. I wanted to represent their products, so I went to Massachusetts, where they were located, and stayed in a very cheap hotel. I called the GCA switchboard every day to explain my intention and wanted to see the general manager.

On the third day, their special assistant actually helped me schedule a time to meet the deputy general manager. They thought it was ridiculous at the time, and they didn't know Taiwan. At that time, ITRI only had a demonstration factory. Who would have believed that Taiwan Semiconductor would develop.

He said to me while smoking a cigar, (Agency) this business is very expensive, how much do you want to invest? In the end, of course, nothing happened, but he was the number one figure in the semiconductor circle. Later, whenever he met someone, he would tell them that there is a so-and-so in Taiwan. In this way, I got a free reference (recommendation). After

, (I) sold other people's equipment, but I never forgot my original dream in school, (I thought) I should make my own equipment. Today you may see that Hanweike was sold to ASML for US$3 billion, but before that, we made a lot of efforts and attempts, and also invested in some technologies that we thought had great potential, but most of them failed. The frequency is very high, but we have also accumulated some knowledge.

No matter what we do, the principle we adhere to is that if what you are making today is already on the market, don’t do it. Unless you can add considerable (a lot) value to and it can be much better than the original one, otherwise you should not do it. If you do, it will be a waste of time.

In the field of semiconductor equipment, if you were to sell to a company like TSMC today, it would be useless even if it was half the price. What they want is the highest level of technology. I have always emphasized: It’s good if you are willing to invest in it, but if there is no way to identify the technology and equipment that you can really win, no one will buy it.

can provide solutions to customers' problems, which are opportunities

It's not that we are great, but that we have been lucky enough to identify some opportunities in the past. People say that takes ten years to sharpen a sword. In fact, we have been sharpening it for 20 years. It takes a lot of time to come up with a product and then push it to the market. It is a long and bitter story to tell, and not everyone Everyone is willing to do this.

Let me give you the example of our Ion Beam Implanter. Why did you choose this product back then? Of course, one reason is that I go out to work in society and sell two devices, one of which is an implant machine, so I feel very good about it.

The key point is that when the manufacturing process is more advanced, the junction of the semiconductor is getting shallower and shallower, and the voltage cannot be used too much. The demand at that time is to use low voltage, but the current must be large. We have used many methods to increase the current, but they all have negative effects, that is, the ions injected are impure, which is called energy contamination. This problem plagues semiconductor factories.

We identified this as a problem when we found that the equipment at the time was not capable of solving the problem.

You know a customer has a problem, and if you can provide a solution, that's an opportunity. We began to think of ways to solve and discussed with friends in the industry. Later, they came up with a method: we made a high-current, low-energy implant machine that can accurately solve the problem of energy pollution. Later, our customers used many of our machines in the most difficult process of next-generation technology. This encourages us, we have really broken into high-end equipment, we are the only one!

In fact, after we made it, they had something similar (launched it) 2 or 3 years later. Then we can turn around and say: "Hahaha, in the past you all thought that the United States was very advanced, Japan was very advanced, and Taiwan was a COPY, but now I can say that the Americans copied us."

I am not provoking, but What I want to say is that at least you have to put yourself in a position and say, "I can be on an equal footing with you." Only then will you be eligible to get a ticket to negotiate business with the foundry.

A very important point is that your company must have knowledge of (semiconductor) technology. Only then can you understand what problems semiconductor factories will encounter today? How can this problem be solved? Only then can you develop (semiconductor) equipment.

In the past, the government regarded semiconductor equipment as a precision machine industry, and it was completely inappropriate to recruit a group of industry players in Taichung to make semiconductor equipment.

Semiconductor equipment is basically a process industry, and it is a technology industry. You must understand the entire process to know what role the semiconductor equipment you want to play in the process? What effect can it have? If you don't know this, you have no idea what to develop.

will sell the second largest stake in Largan to the Dutch semiconductor company

In 2016, we sold Hanweike to ASML. In fact, we had technical cooperation several years before that, and ASML is now in Lithography (lithography process) has a very unique position. If

can integrate Hanweike's E-beam inspection into their entire system, there will be more synergistic effects. (Editor’s note: Hanweike’s electron beam inspection at that time was an independent inspection tool/technology. ASML or other semiconductor equipment manufacturers wanted to cross the line and study the integration of inspection into lithography machines.Although Hanweike's electron beam technology is very powerful, integration is a trend. If Hanweike cannot find more synergistic effects of E-beam, the risk is actually very high, because the efficiency of E-beam machines will not increase. The cost cannot be reduced)

ASML is a company we have established a cooperative relationship with since 1988, so no one was wary and the negotiation went very smoothly. A few years before

Hanweike was sold to ASML, everyone came to inquire about it, but we were unmoved and didn’t think we wanted to sell it. We sold it to him because of the technical synergy between us and ASML. It was good for our company. For engineers and technology, it is pushing in a larger direction, which is a win-win situation. Whether

should be acquired or not, I don’t think it’s easy to say whether it should be sold or not. It still depends on the situation the company is in. Will selling it bring benefits to the company? It will be easier to think from this starting point.

I would like to add that although we make a lot of money from sales, the money does not go into our pockets. Part of it is used to continue investing in the semiconductor equipment industry.