S P E C IA L F E AT U R E
Meet Dado Banatao: The Philippines’ Bill Gates Diosdado “Dado” Banatao invented a chip that is now found in most computers.
Dado is an electrical engineering alum of Mapua Institute of Technology. Before he could apply the knowledge in his chosen engineering field, he trained as a commercial airline pilot with Philippine Airlines when he found that there no “true design jobs” in the Philippines. Along with this decision, he turned down job offers, including from the Philippines’ largest distributor of electrical power Meralco because of the low pay. Perhaps his odd choice led him to his dream job. When he was under training, he was pirated by Boeing and assigned as a design engineer for Boeing 747, which is the company’s new commercial airliner and cargo transport aircraft in the United States. When Dado was at the U.S., he grabbed the chance to take his engineering studies further. He finished his Master of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in Stanford University in 1972.
In the small barrio of Malabbac in the town of Iguig, Cagayan, Philippines grew a man who has now established a name in the tech industry. He who used to walk barefoot along the dirt roads of his hometown has cofounded three startups namely Mostron, Chips and Technologies, and S3 Graphics.
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The story of Diosdado Banatao, or Dado, as a technology innovator and venture capitalist in Silicon Valley is the perfect illustration of rags to riches. But his life involved a lot of unexpected turns before he became the engineer that transformed the lives of many through his invention of a computer part.
Later, he acquired working experience from different technology companies such as the National Semiconductor and Intersil. But his greatness was put to form when he developed the first single chip, 16-bit microprocessor-based calculator under Commodore International. Dado was able to reduce 300 components into three with that computer chip.