JERRY NEAL: A risk-taking Randolph County entrepreneur helped create a wireless pacesetter.

• Author: Infanzon, Vanessa

Jerry Neal chuckles when asked about his success in developing one of North Carolina's most successful tech companies, and later, building perhaps the state's biggest house east of Biltmore Estate. He hasn't forgotten the times he stumbled. Always a risk taker, sometimes the gamble paid off. Other times, it was rough going.

His achievements stem from a childhood fascination with electronics and an ability to calculate risk, he says.

As a young boy, Neal experimented with 1,000-volt and 2,000-volt transformers in an Archdale lab built by his father, a Randolph County native who learned about electronics after his World War II service.

After earning an associate degree in engineering from N.C. State University in 1963, Neal worked for Carolina Power & Light Co. for two years then joined computer pioneer Hewlett-Packard in High Point.

While soaking up knowledge about the tech industry, Neal spent his free time inventing an electronic sensor to check moisture in soil. After a decade at HP, he left to start his own business, Watertech, but the money quickly ran short. An Ohio company bought most of the equity and moved the business, and Neal to the Midwest.

Neal returned jobless to North Carolina. He later joined Boston-based Analog Devices, an early supplier of mobile telephony. That's where he met colleagues Bill Pratt and Powell Seymour. The trio got the entrepreneurial bug to start RF Micro Devices in Greensboro, making semiconductor chips used in cellphones.

Wanting to leave on good terms, Neal persuaded Analog Devices CEO Raymond Stata to provide a severance package that would help start RF Micro in 1992.

The startup's revenue soared from $1.7 million in 1995 to $29 million in 1997, when RF Micro had its IPO. Neal, then 52, was vice president of sales and marketing. Early investors included Charlotte-based Kitty Hawk Capital and a Bank of America venture-capital unit.

The business' market value soared to $16 billion during the 2000 dotcom boom, then declined sharply in the ensuing bust. But Samsung, Nokia and other phone vendors kept buying RF Micro chips. Revenue was in the $1 billion range when Neal left the company in 2012. RF Micro merged with TriQuint in 2015 to form Qorvo, which is based in Greensboro and has a market " value of about $15 billion.

Neal, 77, has stayed busy. He is co-chair and director at Huntersville-based Akoustis Technologies, a public company that develops communications software products. He's put lots of...