NOLAN BUSHNELL AND THE POWER OF SAYING “YES”

I am working on building out my syllabus for Fall 2024 semester right now and was thinking about a great guest we had. Last year during our Fall semester at USC my master’s students had the honor of hosting Mr. Nolan Bushnell as our guest speaker. As most of my connections know Nolan is really the father of the video game industry, having been responsible for the launch of Pong, Atari and later Chuck E Cheese. 

Three nuggets our class took away from his talk:

Look for the business opportunity in every innovation- Nolan talks about seeing early video games “Spacewar!” demoed at MIT and “Tennis for Two” created by Physicist William Higinbotham and how that set him on the path to create and commercialize “Pong” and later “Asteroids.”
Mashups are a great way to differentiate your product- He talked about looking at popular trends and trying to find ways to combine them. His success story here is Chuck E Cheese. Combining the popularity of arcades with pizza joints focused on kids (specifically birthday celebrations) was a mashup that went massive. Just look at hit games like Palworld on Steam which mashed survival, and collection.
Say YES, a lot- Nolans actual quote in class was “Fake it till you make it”. He told the story of getting his first retail order and saying YES to a unit order 5x what his team said they could build. They figured it out just in time for the holiday and Atari was on its way.
I’m particularly motivated by the notion of saying YES, a lot. So many times, we hear all the reasons why something can’t be done but the success stories are usually around motivated individuals taking chances and stretching what is possible. 

It reminds me of a quote from another entrepreneur I admire MR. Richard Branson:

“If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it later!”