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- [00:01]
A
Oh, hey. Welcome to the Look Back with me your host, Keith Newman, former journalist and media guy and go to market consultant in the Valley for the past few decades. Here we have candid conversations with newsmakers and rule breakers, the innovators, entrepreneurs and influencers who share their past contributions along with current insights in a casual yet candid content conversation. This lightly edited passion project of mine is a pay it forward contribution to the next wave of innovators and entrepreneurs. I sure hope you enjoy the program and feel free to share it with anyone who might enjoy it. Now onto the show.
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B
Greetings. Just turn on my camera.
- [00:52]
A
You arrived five minutes after your note taker. So I was wondering if I was going to interview your bot or you.
- [01:01]
B
Well, you know, my bot is much more cogent.
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A
No, Nolan. This is the look back on the tech startup Network and I just want to welcome Nolan Bushnell, the legendary entrepreneur of Silicon Valley to the program. Thank you for joining.
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B
My pleasure. Good to be here.
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A
Yeah. And where am I finding you today?
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B
I'm in Los Angeles in Brentwood, Just a little, just a little bit away from Santa Monica.
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A
Got it. I know the area well.
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B
Yeah, so I'm up Mandeville Canyon. So it's a, you know, a little bit, you know, we got our own weather here. It's not too hot, not too cold.
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A
Yeah, a little bit, a little bit away from the craziness, but close enough that if you want to get into it, you can. Anyways, what has your interest today? You obviously started out, I mean, as far as the tech world where Silicon Valley all got started. And you were super active in a lot of early activities in the tech area. A lot was going on with silicon wafers and chips and Intels and AMDs and Fairchild days. But you found an interest in starting Atari. How did, how did that come, come to your forefront and thinking that was the opportunity you wanted to explore?
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B
Well, I kind of viewed my life as a series of happy accidents, you know, where I made, you know, I was probably the only electrical engineer at the time who put himself through college working at an amusement park. And, and so without knowing it, I understood the economics of the coin operated game business because I had a couple of arcades that reported to me. I ended up managing the games department at the amusement park. And, and so I knew the economics of that. The second happy accident was if you were to play a game on a big computer. There was a game that was called Space War, that was done by a guy at MIT and anybody who had a PDP1 or PDP10, I think they had monitors connected to them and you could play space war. And, and so it was a very easy step for me to, to say, gee, if I had a coin slot next to this monitor, people would put money in it. But then you put, you know, 25 cents for three minutes and divide it into a million dollar computer. And the math didn't work.
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A
Tough business.
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B
So graduated, moved to Silicon Valley, went to work for Ampex. Not because of any great plan, they just offered me the most money.
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A
That's good criteria.
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B
But in that job, I really learned digital logic and how to use MSI technology, which was relatively new. And when I started this MSI technology, they were like $3 a chip. And a year later it was 25 cents a chip. And so I thought to myself, hey, maybe I can use these chips and build this video game. And I did, and it did.
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A
Fantastic.
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B
So the happy accident, a series of happy accidents.
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A
And do they keep happening to you or are you pretty much done with the accidents? For the, the business side of things, what has, what has your interest now? What are you exploring?
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B
I've got, I've got eight kids, and so education for them has been very, very important. And I realized as I was doing some research on cognition and how people learn and what have you, I have this mind that I, I go down rabbit holes and, and I get curious about things. And so I got into brain functions and I realized that some of the skills that I had developed through the video game business could be applied to education. And a statistic that I like to quote is that you remember 5% of what you hear, 10% of what you see, 80% of what you do. And so video games provide the doing if you can put it into an educational context. And so I've got a company called Exodexa right now, which is gamifying high school. And it's a game that if you play it, you end up learning everything you need to know. And so I'm using the addictiveness of video games.
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A
Right.
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B
To educate. Right.
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A
The endorphin rush on the academic side. And what kind of results are you seeing with that?
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B
Tremendous. I love it that when our game is complete, it's, it's about, it's about a third done. And we figure we'll have it done probably by next summer, late summer.
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A
Okay.
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B
And we believe that we will be able to teach all the STEM curriculum for a high school that's four years in about six months.
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A
Right. So are you involved on the game development side with this. Are you just mentoring from an overall business product standpoint?
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B
A little bit of both. I would say that I've got people now that are probably better at the minutia than I am.
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A
Yeah.
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B
But I'm executive chairman and you know, and I look.
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A
And you've got, you've got eight built in beta testers. Right. I like this concept though. And I'm seeing more of this in terms of games play for more than just the benefit of playing games, but for education or even with elderly, you know, helping them stay active with their minds or helping people with depression and other kinds of personal issues or, you know, that the active game is something that's either therapeutic or recuperative, things like that.
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B
Absolutely. We. I'm involved in a couple things like I'm on the board of a little company that does brain games and, and they're basically been used for stroke rehabilitation. And, and, and there's actually a study on going that it can actually help you with dementia somewhat.
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A
Yeah. So I don't need necessarily want to pivot off of this, but it does bring up my thought, which is to develop into a great entrepreneur. It's obviously in today's day and age, especially of AI and everything else, the importance of understanding how to build a product, how, how to assemble a product, how it's going to be used. What are some of those skills that obviously you've had and you've. You've leveraged. Plus what do you think you need as part of that package to be a successful entrepreneur today?
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B
When I advise my sons, my sons and daughters, I tell them just do a lot of things. And that the more things you do, generally a good entrepreneur links together disparate concepts to create something new. Right. And so the more disparate concepts that you have, you know, whether it's flipping hamburgers at McDonald's or whether it's doing a podcast or writing a book, or.
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A
How about making, making pizza and putting arcade games and live entertainment all under one roof.
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B
Exactly. You know, just, just do it, do it. Well, you know, Chuck E. Cheese was a construct that was created because I wanted to create a bunch of standalone arcades.
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A
Yeah.
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Because kids 2 to 8 or 2 to 10 were not being serviced. You know, they, they weren't appropriate for arcades because the teenagers were there. And you know, little kids and teenagers don't mix. And the most, the most successful pizza parlor in the area at the time was a place called Pizza and Pipes. And it had a deconstructed Wurlitzer Theater organ and the Place was packed when they had an organist.
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A
That's funny. Yeah.
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B
And I thought, okay, let's. What can I do with entertainment? And I went to Disneyland and went to the Tiki Room and I said, oh, my engineers can do that. And so we created the characters and Chuck E. Cheese and we put the show on and the same thing happened. And we, you know, went in and sold pizza and, and when you bought a big pizza, you'd get eight tokens.
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A
There you go.
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B
Start you on the, on the game path. And then. And you know, eight tokens lasted about a femtosecond and so that you had to start feeding the beast more money.
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A
That's hilarious. Well, thank you for feeding my. Thank you for feeding my kids and hosting several of my birthday parties for my youngins way back then too.
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B
Yeah.
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As well. We have to give acknowledgement to the inventor of Pong, which. What, what anniversary of Pong are we on now?
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B
40.
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A
40. That's right. Because it's a hugely celebrated event. I mean, does that still give you tremendous affir.
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B
It's actually 50.
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A
50.
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B
I miss. I misspoke. Yeah.
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A
Goodness. Because I knew I saw it. Which triggered my interest in, in catching up with you. But I mean, an amazing, entertaining game for, for millions that does that. That had to be so rewarding to see it and, and stand the test of time in such a, you know, fast paced, you know, world.
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B
Well, you know, I've often thought that there were, there was a very interesting thing that went on with Pong. And Pong was a game in which the typical woman could beat the typical man because women have better small muscles and coordination than men do. That's why, you know, if you see a factory with, you know, small components, it's all women.
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A
Okay.
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And, and it happened at the time when women's liberation was just starting. So it was tremendously rewarding for women to be able to be guys.
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Yeah.
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And more than that, a sociology created in the bars in which it turned out that there was women's choice because if they wanted to play Pong, it became acceptable for women to invite a guy to play Pong with them from the bar stool. And so the number of people that have said, I met my husband or wife by playing Pong is just been amazing.
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A
Did you get, did you get an affiliate fee on that or anything?
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B
I should have.
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A
That's hilarious. If only you did Pac man as the back end of that, you know, you would have controlled the whole.
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B
The whole. You can't invent everything. You've Got to give. Give.
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A
Which product in the last 50 years do you wish you didn't develop? I mean, obviously the economic side of it, but just from a fascination standpoint, which product do you wish you. You invented?
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B
Pac Man.
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A
Yeah, Pac Man.
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B
And, and maybe the Mario brothers were. Became very important, and the Japanese allowed us to do something that I hadn't thought of. And the. We were just doing games. The Japanese told stories, and I think that that was a big blind spot that we had at Atari. We didn't tell stories, and we should have.
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A
Yeah, it's interesting. I, I think the Nintendo franchise, which is still around today, and they, they continue to amaze me in some ways, but I think they. They still have tremendous potential. And maybe it's what you were combining different concepts together, because an example of Go was. Is an amazing product also. But I, I'm curious where that is going, but I think it might be under the wrong. The wrong ownership. I don't know for sure. You probably have a better.
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B
Well, I play. I play a game of. I play probably two or three games of Go every day.
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A
Oh, really?
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Yeah. There's an online. It's called ogs, and. And I do it as much to keep my brain sharp as anything.
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A
Yeah. We go back again. Right.
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B
You know, the, the frightening thing is that I, I used to be. Have a stronger rating than I have now. And it's happened because of either two things. One world has gotten stronger or I've gotten dumber, and I choose to think that the world has gotten stronger.
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A
Yeah, I would, I would choose that. I think I feel, fill in that gap as well. Nolan. It's amazing to think, though, the, the number of other activities that you got into. What is the skill that you wish you had as you admire all the people that you've worked with. In fact, I know there are lots of stories about the early days where you, you knew Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak very well. Obviously they worked at Atari, and you, you collaborated with them a lot early on. One's a tremendous, you know, technology tinkerer. One's a phenomenal product conceptualist. Right. And then, and then, then you, you, you. You fall in there on both sides.
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Well, when we talk about regrets, I actually had a chance to own a third of Apple computer for $50,000.
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A
Yeah. Probably would be one.
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And, and I, And I turned it down because I didn't think Steve was a very good. Would. Would be a very good CEO. And. And it, it turns out that the guy who put the money in instead of me was a guy named Mike Markula, who actually became the first president and was sort of the mentor that. That taught Steve how to be a good CEO.
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A
Right, Go. So going back to your thoughts about the skill, especially for today's day and age, what do you like? You know, sometimes I think about going back to school and studying more about computer programming or studying, you know, product development.
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B
Well, I think the entrepreneur needs four fundamental characteristics. One, they need to be gritty. They need to be able to hit problems, fail. Hit problems, fail, keep going because. Because it's not an easy path. Second skill, they need to be optimistic. You know, you have to believe you can do it or you don't try to do it.
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That's right.
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Third skill, Curious. You gotta be a. Constantly feeding your brain curiosity is the forcing function of, of knowledge. If you're curious, you'll learn stuff. And next skill that is harder to define. But you have to be able to communicate because. And, and dot, dot, dot, sell. Yes, because you have to be able to communicate your ideas clearly and cogently to investors, to shareholders, to employees. And so your communication skills are really, really, really important.
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A
And some of those you have to pick up because they're not necessarily learned at that point. You have to sometimes find ways to learn fast and you would probably recommend. Well, learning by doing is going to get the highest level of retention.
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B
Precisely. This is another happy accident for me.
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A
Yeah.
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In high school, I was on the debate team, so I learned how to speak on my feet and to craft cogent arguments and what have you. Totally. You know, I did it just because I kind of liked it.
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A
Yeah, yeah. No, when you look back on, on this amazing journey of yours, what do you, what do you remember most fondly? I mean, leaving out your phenomenal personal life and finance stuff. And so what do you think about as a. As your lasting memories and legacies?
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B
Well, I think I think of the happy accidents that were very, very impactful. I have to class right at the top is my wonderful wife. I mean, we are truly partners in so many things. And she's a force of nature. And I can honestly say that she makes me better in every way. And so that union, I'm not sure I'd call it a happy accident because when I decided I wanted to get married again, again, she's my second wife. I was married the first time at 22, which was too young. I didn't know who I was, she didn't know who she was. And the wheels came off that one. But. But I decided a Certain set of characteristics. I actually made a list in a wife.
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A
Yeah.
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Wife hates me to tell that story because she said, you know what, what about love? You know. I said well you know, it happens.
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A
Anyway, what number was, what number was love on the list?
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B
Say again?
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A
What number is love on the list?
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B
Wasn't there. No, I, I just felt that, that love happens when you, that it's secondary to respect.
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A
It's a good point though. I mean I, I think a lot of times we move fast when we find love. We think we find this the image of love. But respect is huge. Respect and trust. Yeah, yeah, we, we would agree there. Well, this has been fantastic catching up. I, I, I want to ask you, do you have something else you'd like to share with my audience of entrepreneurs and founders and innovators and folks?
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B
Well, I'm working on a secondary educational project. I'm always looking for breakpoints or singularities world tomorrow and my belief is that AI provides tutoring that is cheap enough that everybody can now be tutored from the, from the poorest to the richest. Historically tutoring was purview of the people who could afford it. $50 an hour. I'm building a series of tutoring set. I'm going to, I'm just starting the fundraising for it. Need to raise a couple million bucks and I, and if you have any of the people who would be interested in funding my journey I would be happy to give them send them a deck and, and, and let's see if we could do something because it's actually got better economics a series of tutoring centers than Chuck E. Cheese.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Because I can get the same revenue with a, with a fraction of the cost.
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A
And, and do you see it as a physical location then?
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B
Is it a. I see it as a 10,000 square foot strip mall location. Kind of like Mazeum or Sylvan learning centers or whatever.
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A
I was going to say there's some out there.
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B
And, and I think that I can provide better outcomes for a fraction of the cost and still make a gobsmack full of money.
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A
Right. Well I'll ask if you want to share that on the in my show notes. I'll put it out there and it's pretty qualified audience and you can gate it if you would like or anything. But we could talk about that offline. I love the fact that you're still doing creative mind bending things. I was gonna say mind altering. That might be a little strong mind mind and challenging things but impactful things that could do tremendous things for society. So that's, that's great.
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B
Well, I like to think, you know, I just turned 81, so that's damn old.
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A
Amazing. Great.
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B
And so the issue to me is what do I want to be on have on my epitaph. And he invented the video game as one thing, but I think it would be more better. More better. It's great language if, if the epitaph said he made the world smarter. Love it.
- [25:08]
A
Love it. Nolan, what a pleasure. Thanks for taking the time. Hugs to Alyssa for me when you see her next. She's amazing. Daughter of yours.
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B
She is. She's number one.
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A
Actually, she's my number one because I don't know the others, but I, I've, I worked with her. I think she's amazing. So a shout out to Alyssa, but special thanks, Nolan. I appreciate taking the time and best of luck with these, these fun activities that you're working on.
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B
Thank you very much and I'll send you off some decks.
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A
Very cool.
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B
Cool. Thank you.
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A
Thank you. Thanks for listening to the look back. We do appreciate your support. Welcome any feedback and would love it if you would subscribe to this podcast and even consider sharing it with some of your friends. For more information and other cool info, check us out@newmanmediastudios.com.