What Is Nolan Bushnell's Net Worth?
Nolan Bushnell is an American engineer and entrepreneur who has a net worth of $50 million. Nolan Bushnell is best known for being the founder of both Atari, Inc. and Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza-Time Theaters.
Bushnell was one of the computer science students who played the Spacewar! Game on DEC mainframe computers. In 1969, he formed Syzygy with Ted Dabney and produced the "Spacewar" clone "Computer Space." The company became Atari, Inc. in 1972. The company released the Atari 2600, which revolutionized home gaming, as well as the video game "Pong." Atari had more than $1 billion in annual sales by 1982 and became the fastest-growing company in American business history.
Bushnell has been inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame. He was named one of the "50 Men Who Changed America" by "Newsweek." Nolan is the co-founder and chairman of Brainrush, an educational software company that uses video game technology. He has started more than 20 companies and is credited with Bushnell's Law, which states that games that are easy to learn and difficult to master are rewarding.
Early Life and Early Career
Nolan Kay Bushnell was born on February 5, 1943, in Clearfield, Utah. Bushnell began his studies at Utah State University in 1961 to study engineering. In 1964, he transferred to the University of Utah College of Engineering, where he completed his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. During his time in college, Nolan was a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity.
While studying at Utah State and the University of Utah, Bushnell worked at Lagoon Amusement Park. He was soon promoted to manager of the games department. Due to the large amount of time he spent around games, he became familiar with arcade electro-mechanical games such as Chicago Coin's racing game "Speedway." His job was to help maintain the machinery if any game broke down. By doing so, Nolan learned how these games worked, developing his understanding of how the game business operates.
Early Career
After graduating, Bushnell pursued his dream of working for Disney and moved to California. However, the company was not hiring fresh college graduates at the time. Instead, Nolan got a job as an electrical engineer with Ampex.
At Ampex, he met Ted Dabney and the two became fast friends. Bushnell shared his ideas of creating pizza parlors filled with electronic games with Dabney. He eventually took Dabney to the computing labs at Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to show him "Spacewar."
In 1969, Bushnell and Dabney formed Syzygy, intending to produce a "Spacewar" clone known as "Computer Space." Dabney built the prototype, and Bushnell worked on looking for a manufacturer and advertising. They made a deal with Nutting Associates. Unfortunately, "Computer Space" was considered a commercial failure after everyone and everything was paid for, though the sales were still over $3 million. Bushnell knew what the problem was. He knew they needed a bigger partner because Nutting Associates did not market the game as well as they had hoped. Also, they needed a game that was simple and easier to follow (since their target audience would be playing at a bar).
Atari
In 1972, Bushnell and Dabney set off on their own and incorporated under a new name, Atari. They soon hired their second employee, engineer Allan Alcorn. Together, the three released a new game, "Pong." "Pong" was very popular with the public, and Atari released a large number of "Pong" based arcade video games, both originals and spin-offs, over the next few years. However, after the release of "Pong," Bushnell and Dabney had a falling out. Bushnell purchased Dabney's share of Atari for $250,000 in 1973.
In 1975, former Atari employees Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak approached Bushnell about investing in their home computer system, the Apple I, which was built from borrowed parts from Atari and with technical support from Atari employees. They offered the design for Bushnell to incorporate into the Atari company and under its name. However, Bushnell declined the offer because he wanted Atari to focus on games. Later, in 1974, Jobs and Wozniak approached Bushnell again with an offer of a one-third equity stake in their new company, Apple Inc., for $50,000. Bushnell declined the offer.
Atari faced increasing competition in both arcade and home consoles from 1975 onward. To combat this, Bushnell focused on producing a programmable home console. The console he had in mind was eventually released in 1977 and advertised as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS). Later, it was known as the Atari 2600. However, in 1976, right before its release date, the Fairchild Channel F stole the show and released the first home console to use game cartridges. To speed up Atari VCS's development, Bushnell approached Warner Communications to buy out the company. Atari was acquired for $28 million, with Nolan personally receiving $15 million. That's the same as making around $80 million in today's dollars.
For a few years, Warner Communications and Bushnell worked together. However, by 1978, both Warner and Bushnell felt that Nolan was no longer a good leader for the company. Later that year, he was removed as CEO and Chairman of Atari. Joe Keenan took Bushnell's position.
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Chuck E. Cheese
In 1977, while Bushnell was still working at Atari, he bought Pizza Time Theatre back from Warner Communication. It had been created by Nolan many years ago, and Warner acquired it from him. Now that Warner was occupied with Atari, he thought it would be a good time to take it back. Pizza Time Theatre was a kid-friendly arcade that was advertised as a "fun zone" for children that fed them pizza and had video games around. It was created to be a distribution channel for Atari games. The name was later changed to Chuck E. Cheese and brought animatronic animals to play music and entertain children as they ate. Bushnell always wanted to work for Disney, so this was his homage to his past dream. In 1981, Bushnell passed on the routine responsibilities of Chuck. E. Cheese to a restaurant executive and focused on his new business venture, Catalyst Technologies.
During the time he was doing business with both Chuck E. Cheese and Catalyst, Nolan used large loans on his Pizza Time stock to fund Catalyst. By the end of 1983, Chuck E. Cheese was suffering financially. Its president and long-time friend of Bushnell, Joe Keenan, resigned that fall. In the fall of 1984, Chuck E. Cheese entered bankruptcy.
ShowBiz Pizza Place, a competing pizza and arcade family restaurant, purchased Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre and assumed its debt. Because Chuck E. Cheese was such a big name, ShowBiz Pizza Time chose to unify all locations under the Chuck E. Cheese brand by 1992. Today, over 560 locations of this restaurant are in business.
Other Companies
From the 1980s to the early 2010s, Bushnell was busy with founding, investing in, and selling several different businesses. Those include Catalyst, PlayNet/Aristo, uWink, Modal VR, and Anti-Aging Games, LLC.
In 2009, Bushnell founded BrainRush, a company that uses video game technology in educational software. He is the CEO and Chairman. The company is based on the idea that many curriculum lessons can be turned into mini-games. Between 2010 and 2012, BrainRush ran a test by teaching the Spanish language vocabulary through these games with over 2200 teachers and 80,000 students across the country. There was an increase in learning speed of between 8–10 times than traditional learning.
Personal Life & Real Estate
Nolan married his first wife, Paula Rochelle Nielson, in 1966. They welcomed two daughters together, and they moved to California in the late '60s. They divorced in 1975, just before Warner Communication purchased Atari. Although Bushnell was a Latter-day Saint in his youth, by the time of his divorce, he had forgone the teachings, often being called a "lapsed Mormon." He said that he stopped practicing the faith after he got into a debate over the interpretation of the Bible with a professor at the University of Utah's Institute of Religion while in college.
Around the end of 1977, Nolan married Nancy Nino, with whom he had six children.
Also in 1977, he used $4 million of his Atari sale proceeds to purchase the former mansion of coffee magnate James Folger in Woodside, California. They sold the home in 1996, a few months after listing it for just under $9 million.
