Grow with Your Customers: TSMC Advances Alongside the World’s Leaders

Originally published 2025-05-20Excerpts from a Dedao audio summary of 張忠謀傳 plus Robin’s commentary (as of May 2025)

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Collected in Robin Shen’s Field Notes · Content type and attribution are shown above

English translation of the Chinese post originally published 2025-05-20. Translated 2026-11-04 with AI assistance. Historical figures and claims have not been updated or independently verified. 中文原文

Reading guide

The opening audio-book summary describes TSMC targeting European and US markets from its first day and growing with customers such as Qualcomm, Broadcom, NVIDIA, Apple, and AMD. Robin adds that earning customers’ trust requires doing certain things better than they can themselves. Only then will they share key technologies and develop the next generation together. TSMC’s achievement, he argues, comes from moving alongside a group of world-leading companies, rather than developing in isolation and assuming it can beat everyone upon emerging.

Key points

TSMC grows together with its major customers.
Doing things better than customers can themselves builds trust.
Advance alongside leading companies rather than developing in isolation.

One clear path continues into the distance among several branching routes, suggesting choice and focus. — Entrepreneurship & strategyThematic illustration · AI generated

Full text — English translation

Grow with Your Customers From its first day, TSMC primarily targeted European and US markets, continually improving its technology in the process. Alongside Intel, its major customers include Qualcomm, Broadcom, NVIDIA, Apple, AMD, and others. Growing with customers became TSMC’s motto. TSMC and its ten largest customers together invest more in R&D than Samsung and Intel combined. Its list of ten largest customers continually changes. At any time, some grow more slowly than TSMC, but other winners of their era grow rapidly alongside it. TSMC sustains growth because it keeps company with the fastest-growing businesses. #Dedao audio summary of 張忠謀傳 ---- Robin: ‘The key to growing with customers is doing certain things better than they can themselves, then earning their full trust. They can share key technologies with you and jointly develop the next generation. TSMC’s achievement comes from advancing alongside a group of the world’s leading companies, rather than cultivating its skills in isolation and emerging convinced it can defeat everyone.’

These articles are personal notes, book excerpts, and collected reprints. Figures and events reflect the time of the original publication, are not current information, and do not constitute investment advice.

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