How Ameritas Dental Is Going To Change Your Business Strategies.
Ameritas dental founded One Laptop Per Child, you actually were at the MIT Media Lab. Can you tell us a bit about what it was like to found
One Laptop Per Child and how you were able to take that risk to
leave MIT Media Lab and being a professor to start this company? - Well, the bigger risk was telling the CEO of Intel which is I had
been at the previous year that the project they were spending, call it $ million dollars a year was never gonna work. 'Cause Intel only
has what's called rail-to-rail processes and for this chip that we were making to be the best in the world, we needed graded levels of voltage, not just zero or high. And so that killed the project and
then I thought I'd never do commercial work again and I applied to be a professor at MIT and got a call. And the founder had to stay
two days to meet with the founder of Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte. And this sort of -minute meeting just for him to check off on me as a professor turned into a three-hour meeting and we
started One Laptop Per Child. But I needed to start something, and I got the faculty gig. It's kind of like a safe lifetime gig. I sold my houseboat in Sausalito and moved there. But I didn't find it it all
risky to do that startup. My first startup I did after having brain surgery and I needed health care, and we got some like, this is us
finishing my PhD $ million from DARPA. So that seemed pretty low risk and then I was the CTO and then said look, I'll join if I get to pick the health insurance 'cause I had a brain tumor
One Laptop Per Child and how you were able to take that risk to
leave MIT Media Lab and being a professor to start this company? - Well, the bigger risk was telling the CEO of Intel which is I had
been at the previous year that the project they were spending, call it $ million dollars a year was never gonna work. 'Cause Intel only
has what's called rail-to-rail processes and for this chip that we were making to be the best in the world, we needed graded levels of voltage, not just zero or high. And so that killed the project and
then I thought I'd never do commercial work again and I applied to be a professor at MIT and got a call. And the founder had to stay
two days to meet with the founder of Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte. And this sort of -minute meeting just for him to check off on me as a professor turned into a three-hour meeting and we
started One Laptop Per Child. But I needed to start something, and I got the faculty gig. It's kind of like a safe lifetime gig. I sold my houseboat in Sausalito and moved there. But I didn't find it it all
risky to do that startup. My first startup I did after having brain surgery and I needed health care, and we got some like, this is us
finishing my PhD $ million from DARPA. So that seemed pretty low risk and then I was the CTO and then said look, I'll join if I get to pick the health insurance 'cause I had a brain tumor
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