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Nolan Bushnell’s 24th Startup 13 June 05
By his count, Nolan Bushnell has been part of starting 24 companies. He founded Atari in 1972, and Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Time Theatre in 1976. Both companies were early pioneers in their businesses.
Steve Wozniak (left), Nolan Bushnell, and stuffed animals, 1986
Bushnell’s newest venture is a restaurant concept called “Media Bistro.” The first one will open in West Los Angeles this Fall.
Here’s a description of the concept, from a recent story in The New York Times: “Touch-screen monitors, installed at every table, booth and barstool, will allow diners to place food orders, play some 70 different video and trivia games, and even take instant pop culture polls. “The monitors at the tables will be two-sided, so that two people, or two couples, will be able to play video games against each other. The restaurant will be divided into two sections, one with more casual gaming at the tables and another where games can be organized for large groups, as in bingo halls. “Projected onto the walls of the restaurant will be digital images ranging from movie previews to changing scenes, like snowfall in winter and clover fields on St. Patrick's Day. "There will be media everywhere, interactivity everywhere," said Mr. Bushnell, who is 62. "This is not going to be candlelight dinner."”
Bushnell’s approach to his serial start-ups is quite different from those of entrepreneurs like Jeff Citron and Mark Cuban. Citron, with VOIP, and Cuban, with digital film distribution, bring significant personal financial resources to bear on industries that they believe can be profitably restructured via new technologies.
Nolan Bushnell’s companies, on the other hand, are not about restructuring; they are about new experiences. This requires a very different approach from Cuban or Citron. Bushnell’s companies:
Ø Start small and grow organically;
Ø Are often public – Media Bistro stock is trading over-the-counter at 50 cents a share.
Ø Build on Bushnell’s previous successes and failures. While Cuban and Citron move across industries, each of Bushnell’s ventures carries pieces of his previous efforts. Chuck E. Cheese built on Atari and combined electronic games with pizza. The Media Bistro combines electronic games with adult food and drink – targeting the young adults who may miss the Chuck E. Cheese experience that they had when they were children.
“People used to play games to socialize with one another before technology allowed them to play alone at home. We want to shift back to a time when people played games to build relationships.” Nolan Bushnell in USA Today
Ø Bushnell often links his new business ideas to some perceived societal need. Media Bistro is intended to make game-playing a social activity once again.
While Bushnell starts with the product or service, sometimes the business model doesn’t work -- the idea is intriguing, but it can’t be delivered at a profit. For example, Bushnell’s robot firm “Androbot” created high-end robotic toys. These turned out to be both too expensive and too unreliable to support a profitable company and resulted in a financial mess that took Bushnell and Merrill Lynch 15 years to clean up.
To make its business model profitable, Media Bistro is adding a number of features that are designed to deliver higher profits than the average restaurant. For example:
Ø Because patrons order on-screen, the number of waitstaff can be reduced; Ø Bushnell plans to run surveys and commercials on the screens when diners aren’t playing games, to generate additional revenue from advertising.
Bushnell himself doesn’t know whether these approaches will work. “If customers don’t like [them], we’ll stop,” he told The New York Times.
The first Media Bistro will thus be more of a prototype than a finished business. If Bushnell and his company can make it profitable and replicable, it might be coming soon to a location near you – after all, Chuck E. Cheese now has 498 restaurants worldwide.
Whether it succeeds or not, Bushnell will inevitably move on to start up company number 25. In its ambition and approach, number 25 will probably be quite similar to the companies before it, providing something new and, potentially, changing the lives of millions of people.
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