How I Did It: William Wang, CEO, Vizio

When the founder of TV-maker Vizio--soon to be a $2 billion company--says it’s not about the money, believe him. Surviving a fiery plane crash gives a man some perspective.

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As told to Mark Lacter

William Wang knows about keeping things in perspective. As one of 96 survivors aboard a Singapore Airlines 747 that took off on the wrong runway in Taiwan, struck a construction site, and broke in two, Wang instantly realized that the difficulties of his various technology businesses weren't such a big deal--not when 83 passengers and crew members were killed that day in 2000. Wang shut down all his businesses after the crash, and in 2003 got into the flat-screen TV business by launching Vizio. His idea was to combine low prices (now around $1,499 at retail for a 50-inch plasma) with high quality and exceptional customer support, and to make this approach profitable through extremely lean operations. Wang, 43, started the company with $600,000, and this year Vizio will generate more than $2 billion in sales. Yet it still employs just 80 people, most of them handling tech support out of the company's Irvine, California, headquarters.

I was born and raised in Taiwan. I came to California with my parents when I was 14. It was a difficult adjustment because of language problems, cultural problems. I came to the U.S. without any knowledge of English. I originally wanted to be an architect, but being an architect doesn't pay that much, so I got into electrical engineering. I went to USC, graduated from the engineering school in 1986, and answered a newspaper ad from a Chinese company that sold computer monitors. I was in tech support, answering customers' calls. I worked there until 1990. After a while, I thought I could build a better computer monitor than the IBM standard. So I started a company called MAG Innovision, just like that. I was 26--fearless, young, and foolish. My boss gave me $150,000. I borrowed some money from my parents. I had some money myself, and I found another shareholder from Asia who gave me $150,000. I founded the company on $350,000.

Those were the good old days after the computer boom. We grew to $600 million in six years. We started with two or three people and got to about 400. The manufacturing was done overseas, very similar to what we now have. Everything just happened. I had no experience, but looking back, there were not a lot of problems because the market was growing so fast. Then the industry took a different turn. By 1998, our revenue was around $470 million. The computer business had gone from a technology-driven industry to a commodity industry. Operations-wise, we spent too much money and I didn't have the right people in place. We lost a lot of money because I didn't change. We sold the company to our manufacturer.

I started another computer monitor company called Princeton Graphic Systems. I started an R&D facility in Asia that worked on high-definition TVs. I tried doing custom video displays for slot machines, Internet-enabled high-definition TV sets, and a few other businesses, but none of them really worked out. I was still looking for the next big thing. It was probably the most difficult time in my life. Financially, it was a disaster. When everything was collapsing on me--all my businesses--I was in an airplane crash. It was November of 2000. I had finished meeting some of my creditors about my cash-flow problems and was coming back to Los Angeles.

The captain took the wrong runway. Instead of 5-L, he took 5-R. The runway was under construction. So we took off and half the plane was in the air, 180 miles per hour, and on its way to lifting off when it hit some of the construction equipment and the plane blew up. It was a 747 ready for a transpacific flight, so it was full of fuel. The plane came back down on the unfinished runway and it kept on going because of the speed at which it was traveling. I was in the front. Fortunately, it went straight forward and just skidded. It was just the front of the plane--the back was gone already. It was like a silent movie. I don't even remember any noise. I assume people were screaming. When the plane stopped moving, I just got out. I couldn't breathe anymore because of the fumes. I was running for air, I was running for an exit. Half the passengers died. I wasn't really injured physically--I did have carbon monoxide poisoning. I guess several things went through my mind when the plane blew up. One thing was my family. The second thing was that all my headaches were suddenly gone. I was still stuck with all these bad businesses, but I had a better attitude. I mean, at the end of the day, we're all going to die, right? So after the plane crash, it took a year or two to clean everything up.

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