And if he were one, he'd probably be known for his playmaking skills. With the court wizardry of a Jason Kidd , Nicholas sees the game unfold and always makes the business equivalent of the right pass or the perfect shot. And he's well on the way. Broadcom chips today can be found in most set-top boxes and cable modems, and the company has made heavy inroads in corporate networking, home networking, digital subscriber lines and wireless. We bucked conventional wisdom that says you should focus on a single market, and instead engaged in multiple markets simultaneously.
Fruition is an understatement.
Nicholas co-founded Broadcom in 1991 with Henry Samueli , who had been his engineering professor at University of California, Los Angeles. The pair held off taking the company public until April 1998, by which time Wall Street was chomping at the bit to get a piece of it. The 17 companies he has bought have given Broadcom technology that it couldn't develop quickly in-house and beefed up its presence in markets for optical, networking and wireless equipment. So far, he's been up to it. And at Broadcom, the results speak for themselves.