Celebrating 50 Years of Atari with Nolan Bushnell (REPLAY)

50 years ago today, Atari was born! So I am celebrating with a REPLAY of Series 2 episode with the legendary Atari founder  Nolan Bushnell – serial entrepreneur and a pioneer of the video games industry.

After an early interest in engineering, Nolan went on to study Electrical Engineering before setting up Atari with Ted Dabney and Al Alcorn (I interviewed in Series 1, EP 8 - listen here). Atari experienced huge success with Pong which was one of the first computer games ever created but whilst it was hugely popular, Atari was born at a time when venture capital didn’t really exist, IP could not be protected and so the journey to keeping the company going was much tougher than it is today and by the time Warner Communications made an offer for the company, Nolan was ready to sell.

In this interview, we look back at gaming history, Nolan talks me through the highs and lows of building Atari, the traits he looks for when hiring, and why one of his biggest regrets was turning down an offer from Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak to own a third of Apple.

Enjoy!

NB This episode was recorded January 2021.

------

Let us know what you think of this episode and please rate, review and share - it means the world to me and helps others to find it too.

------

Danielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and  Instagram @daniellenewnham

Nolan Bushnell on Twitter @nolanbushnell

-----

This episode was hosted by me - Danielle Newnham, a recovering founder, author and writer who has been interviewing tech founders and innovators for ten years - and produced by Jolin Cheng.