“Somehow even when he’s sitting still, Nolan Bushnell seems to be in constant motion,” Mike Cassidy reports for The Mercury News. “He’s like a human ‘Pong’ game, bouncing from one thing to the next, not randomly but with purpose, going from cofounding Atari to starting kiddie restaurant Chuck E. Cheese’s to helping incubate dozens of other companies to a brief thing with high-tech eatery uWink to now launching education startup Brainrush and writing a book, ‘Finding the Next Steve Jobs.'”
“When he helped start Atari in 1972, Bushnell cemented his reputation as a valley pioneer. He’ll forever be associated with Pong, an early Atari game designed by Al Alcorn, which ended up in bars across America,” Cassidy reports. “And yes, it was at Atari that Bushnell hired Steve Jobs, who was 19 and not a very pleasant fellow. In fact, Bushnell is one of the few people who actually hired Jobs. (Jobs, as CEO of Apple and Pixar and founder of Next, was usually the one doing the hiring.)”
Cassidy reports, “‘Steve was difficult but valuable,’ Bushnell says. ‘He was very often the smartest guy in the room, and he would let people know that.’ But Bushnell remains awestruck by Jobs’ success and the way he grew into not only a top executive, but a visionary — a rare combination.”
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