VIZIO CEO To Give Commencement Speech At UC Irvine Business School
VIZIO Inc. CEO, William Wang will give the Distinguished Executive address at the UCI’s Paul Merage School of Business commencement ceremony. The ceremony will take place at the university’s Bren Events Center on June 19 at 9:30 a.m.
Wang’s journey to become the founder and CEO of the company Forbes listed as one of America’s largest Private Companies in 2016 has been far from linear. After beginning his career in tech support at a firm that sold computer monitors, Wang decided to start his own companies, Mag Innovision and Princeton Graphic Systems, with the goal to “ … build a better monitor than the IBM standard,” according to an interview in Inc. Magazine.
Almost decade later, both businesses were flailing. Around the same time, the entrepreneur survived the Singapore Airlines Flight 006 plane crash, wherein 83 passengers and crew members were killed. This trauma gave Wang a sense of clarity; within two years, he had shut down his businesses and changed industries. Wang’s move to the television industry proved fruitful. With just two employees, he started VIZIO, an HDTV company dedicated to delivering “…high performance, smarter products with the latest innovations at a significant savings…” Essentially, Wang’s team turned flat-screen TV’s into an affordably commodity, rather than a luxury for a wealthy minority.
It is appropriate that Wang, whose company began with three people and is now a leading supplier of HDTV’s, should speak at The Paul Merage School of Business. Though the school is relatively young, it has quickly earned a reputation for offering top tier education, and is now ranked in the top 10 percent of AACSB-accredited programs.
