Page 4 - Chi Phi - Fall 2017

ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: TIM SEMONES ’81

raise money in the community and field a team
every year, he’s finished eight of these races.
Our best finish was 25th in 2011. Generally 80
teams start out of Anchorage each year and
60+ finish in Nome 10 days later. I usually hop
a ride with a bush pilot buddy of mine in Tal-
keetna, Alaska and follow the race along the
way. One of the pictures is me near the village
of Huslia in 2015; it was -46°F.
6. What advice would you give to young
alumni and active members?
Embrace change. Never compromise
on what you believe in, but always look for
win-win. Work hard on your EQ (emotional
quotient). Another thing I would say is to not
“leave anything on the field” while you are at
Tech and at Chi Phi. There is so much to learn in
the classroom but also so much to learn being
in a band of brothers. One of my contempo-
raries at the House, John Stevens lived an
Tim in Alaska in 2015 attitude that he called . . . “Yes, we’re here for
the crane”. It was a bit crazy in practice during
1. How would you describe your time at as far as physical plant goes. Tech was going to college days, but it catalyzed the core belief
Georgia Tech? be the Olympic Village for the ‘96 games and for me that you go hard after what you want,
I still think of it as right up there with the there was momentum campus wide to update and you go after it with confidence.
best times of my life. I was way into having fun facilities. Dave and I were OTA officers and 7. Can you tell us more about your busi-
and way into working hard at school. I don’t partnered on the project; he ran the construc- ness life after Tech?
remember a lot of easy going and relaxing. tion and I ran the fundraising. We had a great An electrical engineering graduate in ‘81,
2. What is your favorite Chi Phi memory? campaign and the House continued to stand I went to work with Hewlett-Packard out of
So many good ones . . . Maybe as pledges, tall for these past twenty years. The house school. Great technical and business learning
“borrowing” a decorated Christmas tree, when wound up hosting the Saudi Arabia Olympic experience. Started my first tech company at
we brought it back it went all the way up the team. It was obviously an easy decision to 25 with an HP colleague. We did all sorts of
spiral stairs to the third floor? Maybe the band jump on board again. This time is lot easier, at interesting software and electronic measure-
“Green Ice” after fall football games? Maybe least for me just playing a complementary role. ment work. I took a deep dive into character-
family dinners at the house, laughs with Mother The current OTA officers (Dave included), the izing radar absorbing materials for stealth
Brooks? Maybe Exec Committee meetings try- Chapter, and Elevate (our fundraising consul- aircraft and also spent an inordinate amount
ing to figure out how to make kitchen payroll tant) are doing a great job on the campaign. of time developing a sensor system for pre-
and throw this weekend’s party? Maybe cise measurement of fastener holes in
meeting my wife-to-be Susan on the airplane wing assembly. Every Boeing
steps at the front of the House after just and Airbus wing line utilized these sys-
returning from a Fall Rush float down the tems for ten years. I then went to MBA
Chattahoochee? school at UCLA at 35, moved back to
3. What led you to join Omega Chap- Atlanta and worked with MindSpring as
an Internet guy until we merged with
ter? Earthlink. I decided to leave Atlanta in
At FASET (freshman orientation), the
first person I met at Tech was our upper 2000 and finally do that winter ski sea-
son I always dreamed of. We moved to
class group leader. He was Omega-man Sun Valley, where almost immediately a
Dave Skelton, who naturally took us by PhD researcher, wiz-bang, MBA class-
the Chi Phi House. Dave is still one of my mate of mine called with an idea for a
closest friends, and we had great col- semiconductor company doing chips for
lege years and have both enjoyed giving high-speed fiber optics for telecom and
back as alumni. There was something datacenter applications. He needed a
different about the Chi Phi House com- partner who knew entrepreneurship and
pared to others for me. It was a really the operations side. 10 years and $75M
diverse, authentic, and slightly quirky Tim at Chi Phi Chakett in 1980 of venture capital later, the company we
group of guys. We had third generation founded – Inphi – went public on the
legacy, old-time Atlanta folks who knew 5. Outside of work, what do you do for NYSE. My partner Loi and I and 10 others rang
every bar in Buckhead and everyone in town, fun? the bell at the opening of the NYSE trading
and serious hardcore students who spent I moved to Sun Valley, Idaho with my family floor in November 2010. I left a year after, but
countless hours on classwork but loved to cut about 16 years ago. My daughter just turned Loi and Inphi live on. The company does over
loose. It was a great fit for me. 18 and it has been great fun watching her grow $250M in revenue and is worth over $1.5B in
4. Can you tell us more about your deci- up here. Sun Valley is a ski resort and I would the market today. I know that my education
sion to serve as the Steering Committee call myself a ski bum. I also enjoy hiking and and experiences at Georgia Tech and UCLA,
Chairman for the chapter’s renovation/ camping in the mountains here. My biggest and a little luck, were what enabled me to have
expansion capital campaign project? fun project each year is partnering with a great such a journey. I took a few years off, but I’m
Dave Skelton and I did a similar thing back friend of mine here in Idaho who mushes the back doing another tech startup in the semi-
in 1996. The house was in pretty rough shape Iditarod 1000 mile dogsled race in Alaska. We conductor space.

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