Changing Company

If there was one thing Alex d’Arbeloff hated when he began to work, it was the job.

Hired at 16 for the summer to do calculations in a New York office, he says, “I began calculating how many days I had left, how many hours, how many minutes, how many seconds. Then,” he says brightly, “I got sick and my father let me quit.”

Work was to become much more exciting for Alex d’Arbeloff. The 69-year-old high-tech entrepreneur who founded Teradyne, Inc., the world leader in the production of automatic test equipment for the electronics industry, recently was named Chairman of the MIT Corporation, succeeding Paul E. Gray, MIT’s 14th president.

“I am absolutely honored,” d’Arbeloff says. “No matter how big a company is, it doesn’t have the scope of MIT; it can’t contribute so much to society. The thought that I might contribute to an institution of this excellence, this magnitude,
one that has this impact on society, well,” he says. “I am truly honored.”

D’Arbeloff, long president and CEO of Teradyne, stepped down as president in May but remains chairman of this company he built to 6,000 employees and sales of $1.2 billion. He so loved running a company, he says, “because everything changes and you have to adapt,” and nobody was more adaptable than Alex d’Arbeloff.

He Moved

He moved nine times before he was 12. English is his fourth language. His father had tried several businesses, real estate, movies, this, that, which often sent the family packing.

His parents each left Russia during the Revolution and met in Paris, where Alex was born. Then they moved to South America. Fast Alex learned Spanish. But the family moved again.

In New York in 1938, Alex spoke nearly no English. One day he could not find words to tell a teacher he was sick. He knew no American games. He should have been in sixth grade but was in fourth. That stung.

Later living in California, he caught up to the right grade. “I wanted to be an American kid. I was determined to lose my accent,” he says, which he did. “Brought up like that, you have to adapt,–to different people, different countries, different languages. It makes you more self-sufficient.”

In 1949, he earned an MIT degree in management and began his career at a Connecticut company. In 10 years he was fired from three jobs. His self-sufficiency did not impress his superiors. In the army, he was transferred.

“The general called me into his office and said ‘D’Arbeloff, you’ve antagonized every officer in this post.’ I didn’t feel I had. I didn’t do it on purpose. I just wanted to do more than they were willing to do.”

D’Arbeloff had vision. He thought that the companies he worked for were doomed. I just thought, my God, I’ve got to save this place. It’s going down the tubes,” says d’Arbeloff, who happened to be right. Every company that fired him folded or was acquired.

“In the ’50s businesses were doing well. Bosses weren’t friendly to the idea that they should change. My instincts were right, but my timing was off,” he says, adding some companies lasted as long as 20 years. “I would have been more effective if I were more tactful and patient.”

Somebody Listened

Then Nick DeWolf, an MIT classmate with great ideas, wanted to begin a firm in capital equipment for the semiconductor industry and wanted d’Arbeloff as a partner. “We had a chance to form ideas on our own,” says d’Arbeloff, who finally was doing what he loved.

One reason he wanted to start the company was so he could stay in one place. On a day in 1960, they began Teradyne in Nick’s house; three months later they had money to rent an office, choosing a Boston spot so they both could walk to work. “Founding a company is like moving a square wheel. After a while the corners break off and it starts to roll,” says d’Arbeloff, who loved running a business. “Nothing happens unless you initiate it.

“President of a small company, you’re doing everything yourself. As it succeeds, you delegate, recruit others, and it gets bigger and bigger. You have to keep changing your own job, and it’s very challenging and fun.”

DeWolf left Teradyne after 10 years and d’Arbeloff ran the company alone. As boss, of course, sometimes he fired people. “I know how it felt,” he says. “But the good thing about being fired is you learn what not to do and get a philosophy of what you would do.”

D’Arbeloff now shares that philosophy at MIT, where he has taught classes at the Sloan School and developed a management course for graduate students in mechanical engineering, which he has taught for four years.

He lives outside Boston with his wife, Brit, ‘61. The couple is among the Institute’s most generous benefactors, giving to MIT both a professorship and the d’Arbeloff Laboratory in Mechanical Engineering. “It’s corny to say that if you’ve been successful you ought to give some of it back, but it is an issue we deeply believe in.”

A Corporation member since 1989, in his new role he now spends much of his time at MIT. Being in an academic environment where ideas make a difference, he says, excites him.

“One new thing is I never had a private office,” he says of his MIT suite. “I always sat in a cubicle. I guess I’ll have to get used to it.”

by Liz Karagianis

On Topic: alumni/ae, business, entrepreneurship