Nolan Bushnell: belief

Transcript context

…Either. There was the ball and paddle phase, then we went into what I call the game innovation phase of the company. I realized that in those days, the coin-op distribution network tended to be two, sometimes three in every major city. It was normal to have an exclusive relationship. I could pick all the best distributors. The ones didn't have an Atari deal, they were looking for anybody that they could put into business to compete with us, and I thought, “That's perilous.” I decided to create my own competition. I took the number two marketing guy, the number two engineering guy, and the number two manufacturing guys, and I had them leave en masse, set up a company across the street—it was actually another place—and it was just before a tradeshow. They had a game which was the next in line that we were going to produce, we let them put their name on it, we went to the tradeshow and they assigned their distribution contract with all the guys that we didn't have. That’s great.…

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