Yesterday, George Zachary, a Venture Capitalist with Charles River Ventures, visited us and spoke about entrepreneurism and startups.

George pointed out several important things needed to get funding from venture capital. The most important thing is that you should have passion and rationality at the same time. If you have a great idea but you cannot show your passion to VCs, or they do not see how strong you desire it, you are not going to get money from them. Also, even though you have deep passion, if you fail to persuade them how your idea actually works, you cannot get money from them either. In terms of that, he mentioned that the combination of CEO and CTO is very important. The CEO is from the business side and can show people their passion and vision. The CTO is from the tech side and can explain how they implement the idea and how it works.

The next thing is network. He did not say directly how important a network is but he explained his weekly work schedule. He spends very little time having meetings with people who do not have any connections with him. He usually meets people who are introduced by his friends. He said that because there are a lot of people who want to meet him for funding, it is very good filtering system. I think most of other venture capitalists have the similar filtering systems. That means you need to have some relationships to make a deal with investors.

Lastly, he talked about what staring a company really means. If you start a company you should work very hard – like working for 14 hours per a day. It is like living in an office. If you have a family and children it sounds terrible and is not even possible. Also, only a few people are successful and you can easily get nothing from what you invest. People like many successful stories in Silicon Valley but they do not know how much effort they should make for that. He told us that a startup is a typical American dream, but it is not the only one goal of our life. It’s just one of them.

On Thursday, February 7, 2008, we had our third elective class given by our very own Carl Rosendahl. Carl graduated with a BSEE from Stanford University in 1979, and with his passion to combine filmmaking and technology, he founded Pacific Data Images (PDI) in 1980. During our class he gave us a thorough insight into his 20 years of experience as the leader of PDI. He was also very generous on giving us advice about working in the entertainment industry based on his own priceless experiences.

At first Carl gave us some details of his background. He started from how he always enjoyed making movies as a child to how he became interested in computer science (back then only available as an Engineering degree). After he graduated from Stanford, Carl started working as an engineer at Memorex, reverse-engineering IBM computers. During his time there he had opportunity to touch on a couple of Apple IIs doing “3D graphics” and was fascinated by what it could do. So he decided to start up his own company: Pacific Data Images with very limited resources but a vision to develop the latest 3D graphics technology as a tool to making films.

He then went on to give us a walkthrough of how PDI came about; how the company developed their software pipeline and how they made the right decision in going for a smaller computer network approach instead of large supercomputers. But most importantly he taught us the key to his success which is to always “love your customers” and “love your employees”.

After giving us a walkthrough of the company’s history he then went on to show us short clips of some of the products that they made throughout the years and he talked more about some of the difficulties and pleasantness of developing those products. Then he talked about how he negotiated with big film companies, especially DreamWorks into producing feature length animated films, Antz and Shrek, so that the company could go onto the next step.

Carl is a man of great vision and innovation, always trying to explore new realms and inspire those around him; he is a great leader and always greets you with warmth. With so much enthusiasm and positive attitude to his life, it is not hard to understand why he came to be so successful. We are truly blessed to have him as our faculty advisor in ETC-SV.

This Thursday, January 31, 2008, we had our second elective class, which was given by a ETC alumni Ira Fay. Ira Fay is currently working in Electronic Arts’ Pogo division as a game designer. During this seminar, Ira gave us really helpful ideas about play testing. As a 2004 ETC alumni, he also gave us very valuable suggestions based on his working experiences and wisdom he has learned.

At first, Ira talked about his studies, and how he finally got into Pogo finding his real interest. Ira worked for Z-Axis, which is owned by Activision before going to Pogo. Working in a small team like Pogo is much better for him than working in a huge team at Z-Axis, because he can feel more contribution and control through projects. By telling us about his change, Ira emphasized how important it is to find out own interest, and what we really want to do everyday.

Since Ira is working in Pogo on casual games, he went through the features of a casual game, such as easy to pick-up, simple mechanisms. By guiding us to think about what is a casual game, he showed us how to do brainstorming.

The most important thing in this seminar was about the play testing circle; Ira used his new project, Mahjong Game, presenting us the most pivotal points of play testing. One is “Do players think what you want them to think?”, the other one is “Do it early and often.”

At the end of this presentation, Ira gave us really good words of wisdom. He mentioned we should make good use of our time, meanwhile, be always thinking about the goal of life.

From this talk given by Ira, we get not only more precise ideas about casual games and play testing, but also how to set our goals of life and find our interests.