Games at Game Maker
The invitation from Atari to a press conference with Nolan Bushnell on Wednesday doesn’t mince words: “We will tell you about an agreement that brings Bushnell, the creator of the wildly successful Pong video game and founder of Atari, back to work for Atari,” the invitation says.
Not so, insists Bushnell. “I am not going back to work for Atari,” says the high-profile Silicon Valley entrepreneur. “My company, Axlon, is going to do some games for Atari. There’s a big difference.”
Still, he says, all the hubbub “is good for Axlon.” And, he adds, “if Atari wants to ride some PR horses, that’s their business.”
Not All Perks Shelved
Ralphs Grocery executives at the Compton headquarters recently felt a pinch as the company instituted austerity moves to cope with the debt from its purchase by Campeau Corp.
About 40 employees who drove fewer than 1,000 miles on business each month had to turn in their company cars. But the loss of that perk was tempered somewhat. Each of those employees received $4,000 toward a new car.
Morris, the Magazine
Credit Jeff Dickey with designing a magazine readers can’t wait to get their paws on.
Dickey, a partner with Alan Weston Communications in Burbank, is publishing the Morris Report as a promotional magazine for 9 Lives, the cat food company that has used the snobbish and finicky cat as its spokesfeline for 19 years.
The 52-page magazine is published quarterly, costs $6 annually to subscribe to and in one year year has achieved a circulation of nearly 40,000.
One recent issue featured a story on cats in the White House and one on cats on stamps. Each issue includes a two-page “Morris Centerfold,” letters to Morris and reader-submitted poetry, including a recent poem urging a Blue Cross health insurance plan for cats.
Dickey owns two cats and said they were partly responsible for inspiring him. “If I’d had a dog, there probably wouldn’t be a magazine.”
Hot Phone Numbers
The recent fire at First Interstate’s Los Angeles headquarters turned up a tip that might help other executives plan for similar disasters: Photocopy your Rolodex and keep a copy in your car or at home. Those little personal telephone directories were among the items most missed by bank officials in the aftermath of the blaze.
Still Singing Its Praises
System, System Industries,
Let us join hand in hand,
Solving data mysteries,
For the betterment of man.
So begins the hokey song that entrepreneur-turned-politician Ed Zschau wrote and sang at employee gatherings of Milpitas-based System Industries, the maker of data-storage products he founded in 1969. Zschau went to Washington as the congressman from Silicon Valley, gradually reduced his stake in the company, and in 1986 was defeated in a race for the U.S. Senate.
Now, Zschau is indirectly building a stake in the company once again. Brentwood Associates, the Los Angeles-based venture capital firm where Zschau is a general partner, has been buying up stock in the wake of the Oct. 19 stock market crash. The firm now holds 23.9% of the company, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“We invest for the long term,” says Zschau, “and this is a good, solid company we’ve known for a long time.”
