Nolan Bushnell, Creator of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese

Nolan Bushnell (0:00)

One of the things about innovation is that experience doesn't help that much, because we're figuring new stuff out.

And so if you're a surgeon, you need a lot of experience and all that sort of stuff. But when you're doing a brand new company in a marketplace that previously hasn't existed, and the technology hasn't been put together that way, or what have you, anybody with passion is probably at the same starting line.

Michael Gervais (0:41)

All right, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais, and by trade in training, a sport and performance psychologist, as well as the co-founder of Compete to Create. And the whole idea behind this podcast, behind these conversations, is to sit down with people who are not just genius at what they do, but have a deep understanding about how they work. And we want to understand from the most extraordinaries in the world, those thinkers and doers, how do they organize their inner life? How are they structuring their life to flourish, to pursue their potential? And what are the mental skills that they've used to build and refine their craft?

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Okay, this week's conversation is with inventor and entrepreneur, Nolan Bushnell.

And you might not know his name, but back in 1972, Nolan changed your world now. And the way he did that is he created an industry when he founded Atari and gave the world the first blockbuster video game ever, Pong.

And today his credo, the way he built his first game is still present and it's shifted the environment, shifted the industry on this premise that video games should be easy to learn and difficult to master.

And so he's also this prolific entrepreneur. He's started more than 20 companies, including Chuck E. Cheese. I mean, how cool is that? Catalyst Technology, the first Silicon Valley incubator and the first Incar navigation system. I mean, his companies go on and on and he's got this beautiful mind, this very creative mind. He's got a very disciplined approach about how he builds out products and systems.