Biography
Kingston Technology CEO John Tu runs the firm, which makes storage and memory products, from a cubicle on sales floor. With longtime partner David Sun, Tu launched a computer memory business out of a garage and sold it to now defunct PC maker AST a few years later. After losing a fortune in the stock market in 1987, the pair started Kingston to manufacture surface-mount memory chips. Tu, a Chinese native who grew up in Taiwan, got an engineering degree in Germany and then immigrated to the U.S. in 1971. Tu's first jobs in the U.S. included running a one-man gift shop with imported Chinese collectibles and selling commercial real estate.