# Steve Bisset > Steve Bisset is an Australian-born engineer and serial founder who has built two companies four decades apart in two different industries. In the 1970s he left an 18-month stint at Intel - where his first assignment was finding the first working 8080 chip in a tray of parts - to start Megatest out of his bedroom with $10,000 of vested stock and a housemate from Caltech. Megatest grew into a semiconductor test equipment company, survived the 1985 industry collapse that cut it from 450 people to about 200, listed on NASDAQ in 1993, and was acquired by Teradyne in 1995 for $245 million. In 2009 he co-founded Terrajoule, now Terrajoule Energy Inc. in Palo Alto, on a deliberately unfashionable premise: pair concentrated solar heat with pressurised hot-water storage and a reciprocating steam engine, a machine nobody had manufactured commercially since the 1950s. Terrajoule raised an $11.5 million Series A in 2013 led by New Enterprise Associates with Air Liquide, and Bisset continues to pursue low-cost dispatchable solar as an alternative to PV-plus-battery, with work extending into India. - **Role:** Chief Executive Officer, Director and Co-Founder at Terrajoule Energy Inc. - **Organizations:** Terrajoule Energy Inc., Terrajoule Corporation, Megatest Corporation, Intel Corporation, Hewlett-Packard - **From:** Australia (raised in Canberra; exact birthplace not publicly stated) - **Nationality:** Australian; based in the United States - **Education:** Secondary education, Telopea Park High School, Canberra, Australia, BS, Electrical Engineering, California Institute of Technology (Caltech) - **Known for:** Founded Megatest Corporation and served roughly 15 years as its CEO, taking it from a bootstrapped bedroom prototype to a NASDAQ-listed company (MEGT, 1993) and a $245 million acquisition by Teradyne in 1995., Grew Megatest from zero to $10 million in revenue with better than 40% pre-tax margins by 1980, and later to approximately $150 million in annual revenue against much larger entrenched competitors., Steered Megatest through the 1985 semiconductor collapse, a 20-to-1 drop in quarterly bookings, without the company failing. ## Career timeline - **1968** — Graduates from Telopea Park High School in Canberra; runs a light-show business and a surfboard export business with a school friend. - **1969** — Spends the summer driving the US East Coast in a van full of surfboard samples, from Maine to Key Largo, setting up distributorships. Applies to college partly to obtain a visa. - **1969-1973** — Attends Caltech on a scholarship, drawn in by an offer of free room and board for joining the football team because he had played rugby. Takes courses from Carver Mead, which he credits with pulling him toward Silicon Valley. - **1973** — Joins Hewlett-Packard's IC design group for roughly six months after an earlier summer working for Charlie Trimble on a pulse generator product. - **1974-1975** — Joins Intel's microprocessor group, hired by Ralph Ungermann into Federico Faggin's team alongside Masatoshi Shima. On his first day he identifies the first working 8080 part. Contributes to the definition of seven chips in the 8080 peripheral family over 18 months. - **1975-1977** — Co-founds Megatest with housemate and fellow Caltech alum Howard Marshall, prototyping in his bedroom on $10,000 of vested Intel stock plus $20,000 borrowed from friends at 7% interest. Sources differ on the founding year: CHM cites 1977, other records cite 1975. - **1977** — Becomes CEO of Megatest following a coin toss with his co-founder, after customers complained the company had no defined organisation. - **1977-1980** — Megatest ships its founding product, the Q8000 tester, selling roughly 200 units to Intel alone. Reaches $10 million in revenue by 1980 with better than 40% pre-tax margins. - **1980-1985** — Raises approximately $42 million in venture capital during the semiconductor boom. - **1985** — The semiconductor market collapses. Bookings fall from $10 million in Q4 1984 to half a million in Q2 1985. - **1986** — Cuts headcount from about 450 to about 200. Company survives eight consecutive quarters in which a single last-week order determined profitability. - **1990** — Megatest returns to profitability at roughly $50 million in revenue, aided by customer-funded product redesigns with IBM and Intel. - **1993** — Megatest goes public on NASDAQ under the ticker MEGT. - **1995** — Megatest is acquired by Teradyne for $245 million. Bisset had served roughly 15 years as CEO. - **2008** — Decides to move into solar energy, describing it as the biggest and most worthwhile thing available to work on. - **2009** — Co-founds Terrajoule Corporation in Redwood City, California, after meeting Australian engineer Robert Mierisch, who had been reviving reciprocating steam engine designs. - **2011** — Terrajoule emerges from stealth with a solar-thermal-plus-storage system aimed at agricultural irrigation pumping, with channel partner JKB Energy. - **2013** — Demonstrates a working system on an almond farm near Oakdale, California. Raises an $11.5 million Series A led by New Enterprise Associates with Air Liquide and angel investors Jim Bochnowski and Craig Winkler. - **2014** — Records an oral history interview with the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, conducted by Megatest alum Paul Sakamoto. - **2021 onward** — Leads the company through its restart as Terrajoule Energy Inc., based in Palo Alto, focused on a patented modular dispatchable solar module and partnerships in India and Canada. - **2026** — Takes part in a TERI stakeholder consultation in New Delhi on concentrated solar power with thermal energy storage. ## Achievements - Founded Megatest Corporation and served roughly 15 years as its CEO, taking it from a bootstrapped bedroom prototype to a NASDAQ-listed company (MEGT, 1993) and a $245 million acquisition by Teradyne in 1995. - Grew Megatest from zero to $10 million in revenue with better than 40% pre-tax margins by 1980, and later to approximately $150 million in annual revenue against much larger entrenched competitors. - Steered Megatest through the 1985 semiconductor collapse, a 20-to-1 drop in quarterly bookings, without the company failing. - As part of Intel's microprocessor group, identified the first working 8080 device and contributed to the product definition of seven chips in the 8080 peripheral family. - Co-founded Terrajoule in 2009 and raised an $11.5 million Series A in 2013 with New Enterprise Associates and Air Liquide. - Built a working solar-thermal generation and storage demonstration system on a California almond farm, using pressurised saturated water storage and a reciprocating steam engine. - Recorded as a subject in the Computer History Museum's oral history collection for his role in the semiconductor test equipment industry. - Helped pioneer management practices at Megatest - company cafeteria, no suits, consensus decision-making, peer-panel group hiring - that were unusual in Silicon Valley at the time. ## Latest updates - **2026-05** — Participated as CEO of Terrajoule Energy Inc. in a TERI high-level stakeholder consultation in New Delhi on firm dispatchable renewable energy and the role of concentrated solar power with thermal energy storage. - **2021-01** — Led Terrajoule's restart as Terrajoule Energy Inc., relocating to Palo Alto and refocusing on a patented modular dispatchable solar module with partners including Empereal-KGDS in Coimbatore, India and New Leaf Technologies in Vancouver. - **2014-07** — Recorded a full career oral history for the Computer History Museum, interviewed by former Megatest president Paul Sakamoto. - **2013-11** — Announced an $11.5 million Series A for Terrajoule led by New Enterprise Associates with participation from Air Liquide. ## Links - Website: https://terrajoule.energy - LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-bisset-5796a --- Profile page: https://yespress.io/steve-bisset Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io Last updated: 2026-07-27