InvenSense Inc., a San Jose, California-based company that makes motion-tracking devices has named a new general counsel—Adam Tachner, formerly of semiconductor company Qualcomm Atheros Inc., whose experience building up young legal departments will help the fast-growing company with its expansion plans.
Before hiring Tachner, who started work at InvenSense late in the summer, the company, founded in 2003, had never had a GC for more than a few months at a time. However, it seems that Tachner is there to stay. He told CorpCounsel.com that an important part of his new job will be to hire in-house legal staff to carry out many of the processes the company has in place. “Bringing those in-house is the first order of business, in a way that’s efficient and not disruptive,” he said.
Fortunately for Tachner and InvenSense, the new GC has experience structuring and building law departments. At his last position as general counsel for Atheros Communications Inc., and then with Qualcomm Atheros, Tachner had much the same focus. “I’m always interested in finding really exceptional attorneys and exposing them to exciting work,” he explained. “And then we figure out what their specialties are going to be over time.”
At Atheros, Tachner was involved with half a dozen acquisitions. He brings these dealmaking skills to his new company, which is also poised for growth—InvenSense recently announced its acquisition of a microelectromechanical microphone business line from Analog Devices Inc, and is planning to open new offices.
The GC said that his time with Atheros gave him the “knowledge base” for deciphering good deals from duds. “Every deal is unique,” he noted. “There are different diligence issues, different potential liability you need to look out for.”
Tachner said he decided to come to InvenSense not just because the new job matched up well with his own experience and legal expertise, but because he is truly excited about the company’s focus on sensors that he sees as the “next great wave in technology.”
“Sensors to me, have the same feeling that wi-fi had when I first learned about it in 1999,” he said.
The sensors made by InvenSense are used in consumer electronics like smartphones, game controllers, and tablets, but Tachner indicated that the sky is the limit when it comes to where they could be used in the future. “To me, it’s really driving the next wave of human-to-machine interaction and machine-to-machine interaction,” he explained.
Another reason why Tachner is excited about new job, is that he has a “love of learning across a broad swath of subject matter,” and enjoys working with engineers and businesspeople who have a lot to teach him. For more proof of Tachner’s drive to gain new knowledge, look no further than his educational resume: He holds four degrees—a bachelor’s in the social science field with an emphasis on the sociology of law from UC Berkeley, and a bachelor’s of science in electrical engineering from California State University Fullerton, a law degree from the University of Oregon School of Law, and a joint master’s degree in business administration from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and Columbia University.
