Columbia startup
MIE Labs Inc. has signed a strategic agreement with Silicon Valley semiconductor company JVD Inc. to share design and back-end resources. The agreement allows the Columbia firm to expand its services and gives it a physical presence on the West Coast.
MIE Labs provide analog and mixed-signal integrated circuit design services, primarily to businesses. Integrated circuits are a set of electronic circuits on one small chip of semiconductor material. Because of their size and low manufacturing cost, integrated circuits are used in virtually all electronics. MIE Labs works with customers to design and develop their analog chips in order to speed the manufacturing process.
“We help other companies develop their hardware. It is not our goal to develop our own chips,” says Chalfin of analog chips that are used in cellphones and smart phones, computers and radios.
As part of its agreement with JVD, MIE is designing the chips while the California firm is producing them, says CEO Edward Chalfin.
"The agreement is a way for smallish companies to address bigger opportunities," Chalfin says.
Chalfin founded MIE Labs nine months ago. The serial entrepreneur sold his former company, Integrated Circuit Designs Inc., to Texas Instruments. As part of the deal, Chalfin stayed on with Texas Instruments until last year.
“I did okay but not enough to retire to the Caribbean,” says Chalfin of his sale of Integrated Circuit. He founded it in 1995 and grew it to a 16-person staff before selling to Texas Instruments in 2007.
Chalfin expects to hear in early 2013 from potential customers to whom he has submitted proposals. Customers include electronic systems manufacturers and companies that design and develop digital circuits but don’t have experience in analog.
MIE is an affiliate of the incubator, Maryland Center for Entrepreneurship. Chalfin is the sole employee of the privately funded MIE. He is subcontracting with designers and vendors until contracts allow him to hire staffers.
Source: Edward Chalfin, MIE Labs Inc.
Writer: Barbara Pash