The founder of Atari, Nolan Bushnell was one of the main speakers at Campus Party Brasil this year. In front of an enraptured audience, he recalled the early days of video gaming, an industry in which he, Atari, and yes Steve Jobs, played an enormous role in.
TNW:
His keynote was full of anecdotes, several of which involved his former employee Steve Jobs and his buddy Steve Wozniak, who gave Bushnell a chance to get one third of Apple for $50,000 (and yes, he infamously passed on that chance.)
Bushnell talks about Apple co-founder Steve Jobs who worked for Atari early in his career, saying one of the characteristics that made Jobs successful was that he was a very, very hard worker, saying: “How many of my employees did I find sleeping under their desks when I came in early on a Monday morning? Not many. Did he kinda smell bad? Yeah. That’s cause we didn’t have showers, and if you didn’t go home for two or three days you could get gamey.”
As well as reminiscing about the early days of the video gaming industry, Bushnell also outlines the key elements of his upcoming book, “Finding the Next Steve Jobs,” which is about what companies need to do to attract and retain creative talent.
The full video of his talk is below, and while it runs over an hour, it’s well worth viewing.
