Eran Egozy

Eran is the co-founder and CTO of Harmonix Music Systems, one of the pre-eminent game development studios in the world, having developed over a dozen critically acclaimed music-based video games. Harmonix was founded in 1995 on the principle that non-musicians should be able to experience the sheer joy of music creation – normally something only afforded to accomplished musicians. Beginning in 2005, Harmonix developed Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero 2, fueling the explosive growth of the music games category to over $1 Billion in sales. In 2006, Harmonix was acquired by MTV/Viacom, and shortly after Harmonix launched the innovative, award-winning franchise titles Rock Band and Rock Band 2. In 2008, Eran and fellow co-founder Alex Rigopulos were named in the Time 100 — Time Magazine’s list of the one hundred most influential people in the world.

Eran is one of the mentors in our new Boston program. Eran worked with several of our companies this summer and did a session called “Harmonix: Lessons Learned.”

Eran not only invented Guitar Hero, but he’s a true Rock Star when it comes to working with startups. We couldn’t be happier to have him as one of our many awesome mentors here at TechStars.

Episode 12 of The Founders

Tuesday at noon, another episode of The Founders.

This weeks episode focuses on investor day which we had at the historic Boulder Theater.  David Hoffman references this post written by Vanilla founder Mark O’Sullivan.  The episode shows what investor day is like through the three companies.  Retel, Everlater and Next Big Sound did a fantastic job demoing their companies.  Some of the teams are still around Boulder, but many are traveling working on raising their rounds and working on partnerships.

The episode ends with a bit about community.  It has been absolutely amazing to participate in the thriving Boulder scene.  I personally want to thank everyone that came to demo day for their support.  Investor day isn’t the end, it is the beginning.

Practice Like You Play

This weeks The Founders focuses on the days leading up to investor day.   Jason Mendelson leads a session on negotiations.  The teams demo to almost 400 people at the Boulder New Tech Meetup.  Niel Robertson leads a session on Product Management and the episode caps off with a road bike ride up Sunshine Canyon with Natty, Nate and Seth Levine.  All in preparation for the big day.

Crunch Time!

Boulder is just a few days away from investor day, where over 200 investors and up to 200 community members will pack the largest venue in town to watch their demos and pitches.  This weeks episode is about the final days before the big day.  Paul Berberian came to talk about his fifth company that wasn’t quite successful.  He shared the lessons learned from the famed Zenie Bottle.   The teams wrap up the episode doing some justice to a printer after they watched Office Space at Red Rocks.

The covered companies are Everlater, ReTel and Next Big Sound.