Julius Blank, who worked at Shockley Semiconductor before co-founding Fairchild Semiconductor, tells how he and Eugene Kleiner, another Fairchild co-founder and founding partner of Silicon Valley's premier venture capital company Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, came to join Shockley's infant semiconductor operation
The story was told by Blank to Charlie Sporck, the legendary former CEO of National Semiconductor, who repeats it in his book SPINOFF.
The story goes that a friend of Blank's phoned him and said that he'd been rung by an acquaintance who told him: "Hey, I got a call from a buddy of mine, Bill Shockley, who's starting up a thing in
After Blank's friend was hired by Shockley, Shockley told him: "You've got to get a couple of assistants."
Blank's friend then asked Blank and Kleiner if they'd like to join as the assistants. The two men had to do six hours of psychological testing. The reason for this was, according to Blank, because: "It turns out that Shockley was being funded by Arnold Beckman and, a few years earlier, Beckman had one of their vice presidents go berserk with a knife and stab a bunch of people."
Blank and Kleiner passed the psychology tests and made history.
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