Startup Stories: Building a Better Display

By the time Chen Chen ’16 arrived at the Yale School of Management, he had already engineered one pathbreaking process, devising a better way to make drill bits used in the oil and gas industry. The drill bits made with Chen’s method lasted up to eight times longer, representing a huge time and cost savings for energy companies. The product was also a so-called zero-to-one design, meaning Chen and his colleagues had taken it from an idea to commercialization.

But he wanted to do it again.

“I like new challenges,” Chen says. “So I thought, ‘Let me learn some other business, and see if I can come up with another product.’”

With access to SOM’s resources for entrepreneurs, it didn’t take Chen long to find his next project. Through the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (Tsai CITY), he met Professor Jung Han, an engineer whose research became the basis for the company they founded together, Saphlux. The pair spent several years developing their idea—micro-LED chips and display modules that can be used in products like augmented reality glasses or hunting scopes—on Yale’s campus, eventually achieving another zero-to-one design. Today, Saphlux has two products, more than 130 employees, its own fabrication line, and revenue in the tens of millions range.

“Zero-to-one takes a long time,” Chen says. “But this is what I wanted to do—groundbreaking stuff. We were willing to pay the price.”

Saphlux, named for the man-made sapphire used to create the company’s semiconductors and the unit of illumination “lux,” benefitted from other SOM offerings as well. Jennifer McFadden ’08, associate director of Yale SOM’s Program on Entrepreneurship, became a mentor to Chen, as did lecturer Robert A. Bettigole ’83, the founder of Elm Street Ventures, who eventually invested in the company. Chen was particularly inspired by classes on negotiations and CEO leadership with Professors Barry Nalebuff and Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, respectively.

The “bunker”—also known as the Honest Tea Entrepreneurship Suite—where student founders meet on the lower level of Evans Hall was also crucial.

“Having a dedicated desk helps a lot—it’s a place to isolate yourself from the job-hunting going on ‘up there,’” Chen says. “Your classmates are getting offers while you’re down there working on your thing.”

Chen says SOM taught him to look beyond his engineering background to the big picture of the company he was creating. Even better, he was able to immediately apply lessons from class to his work with Saphlux.

“I’m learning about something while I’m practicing it,” he remembers. “They’re teaching me financing, and I’m pitching investors. They’re teaching me how to run a company, and I am running a company. I benefitted a lot.”