Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez

One of the things that made life really interesting for us was we were a small company in Miami. Taking orders. Basically over the internet. Using credit cards. But the banks

That we dealt with We're all freaking out. What is this company doing? They're in Miami. They thought you were in something uh uh unsavory. And we're trying out.

run a business. We have to you know you have to buy parks, you have to pay rent, you have to pay services. And uh yeah, they would hold the money for however long they wanted to hold it for because They thought the business wasn't legitimate. Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements. They built.

I'm Guy Roz and on the show today how two guys from Miami with no formal education Reimagine what a gaming computer can do. They make it fast, they make it sleek, and they call it. Alienware.

Up until the early 1990s, personal computer makers were focused on three general categories of users. Office workers, students, and designers, not necessarily gamers. If you were a gamer, you could find thousands of games for computers, but they were fairly unimpressive. The best graphics were on consoles like Nintendo's or Sega's or at the arcade. And then, in 1993, Intel came out with a new processor, the Pentium processor, that would eventually unleash a massive new market for PC makers, the gaming PC. That processor made video games look and sound much better on PCs than ever before. But even then, if you were a video gamer, computers weren't being built for you. And it was around that time, the early to mid-1990s, that video gamers started to get comput built.

They'd order them with faster processors and better graphic and sound cards, features that weren't standard in the PCs sold by IBM or HP or Compaq. This is a time when mom and pop PC makers started to spring up all over the US and around the world. These were small business owners that could build you a PC often for cheaper than the ones sold by the big players. And one of these personalized PC makers was a guy named Nelson Gonzalez. Nelson lived in Miami and hung out with a group of friends who loved playing games. Vide games, board games, Dungeons<unk> Dragons, you name it. And by 1996, he decided to form a little business that would custom make gaming PCs for hardcore gamers. Now, you might not think of Miami in the mid-90s as a tech hotspot, and it wasn't. But what Miami was and still is is the gateway to the Latin American marketplace, and it meant that the city had warehouses filled with all kinds of computer components designated for export to South America. So at the beginning, Nelson had quick access to things like motherboards and computer cases and peripherals, the stuff you need to build a PC.

He called his little business AlienWare in part because, well, he's fascinated by aliens. At the beginning, not a single bank would loan money to Nelson to get the business going, so most orders required you to pay up front. That small cash flow fueled a business that eventually became one of the leading gaming PC companies in the US. And the story of how Nelson did it, with a small group of friends, mostly Cuban Americans, most of them broke, none of them with college degrees, how they managed to turn Alienware into a force in the world of gaming, has a lot to do with both timing and an understanding of a customer base that none of the big players were serving. Ten years after Nelson founded Alienware in his Miami garage, the company was acquired by Dell, and it's still part of Dell today. On today's show, we're gonna hear about three of AlienWare's founders, and we'll talk to two of them, Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez.

Frank will come into the story a little later on. As for Nelson, he grew up in and around Miami in the 70s and 80s, the son of Cuban immigrants. His mom was a homemaker and his dad painted billboards. When he was a teenager, his parents split up and he went to live with his mom, and to help pay the bills He worked at a grocery store and as a janitor.

I was very frustrated. Uh because Mm. Even though we were lower middle class and now I was I would say lower class because i it was m my mom and myself and You know, she needed help.

Um Even with welfare. Yeah. And uh I myself You know, was just

you know, working in these stupid, you know, jobs that really didn't go anywhere and I was like Wow, is this life? Is this is this is gonna be uh you know, all that I can look forward to? So um You know, I kept my head up and and I I always aspired. I always had the confidence, and I think that my parents, especially my mom.

Uh gave me that. confidence that I could do whatever I want. And it wasn't was never something that

Oh you can't do this if you don't want to do it. So I uh I always had that mentality and I I think it's very Generic. Amongst uh Cuban Americans. And

In Miami. Uh it's I I don't know what it is, uh or our parents generation, how just a hustle mentality. Yeah, you know, they would You know, oh I wanna be in the oh sure. I wanna be president of the United Sure. Oh come on. That's easy. uh type of thing. So it's like a natural confidence that they would give you. So I always had that That mentality of you know what, I am gonna get out of this.

Hm. when you were growing up, you spent a lot of time uh playing games and and and even video games like going to the arcade. Right. Uh but when did you start getting into into computer games and h how, like did your Like did your friends all have computers at At that point.

Uh, there was one of our friends, Joe Pontillo, and he was the one the first one that had a A three eighty six, I believe. Mm-hmm. And this was probably Gosh, nineteen Ninety.

That's when we were exposed to the P C Uh for gaming. Because we saw a couple of video games loaded up for the first time. At that point I made friends. With a gentleman.

Uh an Iranian gentleman. that had um one of those small mom and pop operations where they built PCs And I start hanging out there. And I start learning more and more. So

I had him built A P C And As Uh

I told him, Well, listen, you're gonna build this PC but I wanna I wanna see how you build it. If you don't mind. Yeah. Yeah. And and this was so you could play video game. Yeah, yeah, so I could play game and just you know, just All around just Get on the internet for the first time.

At this point I was longing for that kind of stuff. You know, I I wonder, um so at this time, right, nineteen ninety, you could buy, obviously A compac or you know, and uh w a or a variety, many uh any number of dozens of of of these clowns. Um no name brand. Off the shelf.

P C's why did you want it made for you at that time? You know, because I think that Th it was more expensive to buy an HP. or crack back then. It was cheaper to go to one of these mom and pop places and have them Yes. Yes, absolutely.

And and you're watching him take all the components, obviously the the case for the P C and the The motherboard and the Graphics starts. I mean, today you can go on YouTube and find out how to do this. It's very easy. I've done it twice with my kid. But back then, nineteen ninety.

I'll tell you what, it was It was not easy and the other part of it is, you know, configuring the the the machine So I could work with games back then was Uh you know, an art form onto itself.

And then you'd go out and you'd get you'd buy the the game on floppy disc, presumably. Yes, absolutely. The game that really got me going the first time I saw it. Was doom. Doom, yeah. y you know, you're a space marine in a in a Mars base, you're going through corridors and all of a sudden all of a sudden you got these halacious monsters coming out from from the seventh level of hell or whatever and you're shooting them up and with a traditional gun and whatnot. So

It it was silly, but It wasn't silly. Yeah. So for us this was this world was perfectly acceptable, you know. Hm. Alright, so you've got this.

Uh this kind of new obsession which is which is playing these PC games. And I guess one of the people who uh who shared uh your love of gaming was a a childhood friend named Alex Aguila. And and Alex is gonna figure prominently in this story because he would become a founding member of Alienware, but Uh but at this point I guess you guys are just hanging out, right? Right.

And what he he gets an idea to develop his own game or something like but it wasn't a computer game, it was a board game. Wha wh wh what's the story? Yes. Alex had this idea for coming out with A board game.

Okay. Yeah. And uh The subject matter was Pro wrestling.

You develop your character and you you you roll the dice and basically Y you have certain moves and you put the move on the other guy. It's a it's a it's a tactical game. Yeah. And uh you know, I kind of was like an artist. Uh you know, I used to draw a lot, so He had me do the characters that you know we Thought were really cool.

These are wrestlers. Yeah, wrestlers like the ultimate warrior, you know, type of you know. But you were making up I mean'cause'cause I think the Venn diagram of people who are into pro wrestling video games and role playing games was probably right that the the they all run that center circle, right? That that was a com'cause they're character based. Yes, yes, and it was a bla it's a beer and pretzels game. It was a in fact we could play it today and have I I guarantee you we get a group of people together and I I'm in. I'll bring the pretzels. I would say that was a And how much how much do you guys charge, by the way? Oh jeez.

Man, maybe it was like fourteen ninety nine or something. Maybe it got to twenty bucks. And and do you remember like How how much how many you sold? Like a hundred hundreds. I would say hundreds. I would say I would say like three or four hundred at least.

It's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh all right, so so you've got this successful relatively successful game, but What happened to it? Why didn't you guys um decide to to go big, you know, to sort of like you know, see if you can could get into to You know. Because real is like I think real world dawned on us and slapped us across the face.

And you know and what was that? You know, three hundred copies of this is not gonna you know, buy a house in h in uh in in Miami and and support a family. Yeah, and that's the reality of it. Uh Alex was at that time Uh probably doing if I'm if I'm not mistaken. I think he was doing neurological diagnostic testing of some sort. And he was a technician. Hm.

You know, he was doing that. I was I I was already doing something else. But what were you doing at the time? Well at that time I felt I needed more computing experience. So I interviewed for this job and my friends go, You're crazy. I You know, again, here comes the confidence part.

I interviewed for this job to be an IT support guy or to manage a network, a small network for a post production house. So I got the job. I I I don't know how I got the job because really I you know, I was A novice at computing. Okay, I I had no formal education.

I really I'm not qualified for this. But I always felt that if given the opportunity Listen, I'll learn it and I'll

Nobody's gonna outwork me. There's no way. So I can do this. Sure enough, I got the job. I uh I call Alex Hey Al, you know, I got Агатис менеджер.

What do you think he goes Nelson? You have no idea what you're doing. How the hell did you get this job? I go, I don't know, but you know what, I'm gonna do it. So He goes, You're nuts. I go, Yeah, but something drove me to this. I didn't I don't know what it was, but Something was driving me.

You know, I didn't lie. I really didn't lie in the interview, but I wasn't very truthful either because I didn't have the experience I you know they thought I had. Uh Anyway I got the job, I learned a lot. It it taught me a lot about the comp The components Uh inside the PC. If you're gonna have a P C network.

And uh so I got a lot of exposure to The developers? And uh a lot of smart technical guys that really knew their stuff. Alright, so you're working there. And it would be around this time.

when you would found a company, I believe pronounced Sakai. Sakai of Miami. Sakai. Sakai, okay. And I'm just gonna I from what I understand, this was a company which was Like that your Iranian friend you would do something similar. You would build custom to custom build PCs. Tell me about About

About deciding to leave that job. At the post production house and starting your own You know, we started doing it slowly. Uh I I so Yeah. Uh so I I ask Alex, Alex, I need I need a name for the company

So Алекс за бік колектор оворван, ворчу, кореин. Or uh Aces. So there was this famous Japanese ace back in World War Two, his name was Siburu Sakai, and he was shot and It it spoke to perseverance. The guy was uh heroic.

Uh fighter pilot. So we decided to name the company Sakai. But it was just you know it was me. It was it was myself and another gentleman That started. with me, uh actually he would be the first one to start Amy with, which was uh his name is Fabian Santi Estema. And he works with Alex.

And Hector and all my friends. So Fabian is part of our group already. Yep. So Fabian goes around town and when we get orders from different I don't know, little mo you know, again, these were small businesses that were that were in need of a P C with a printer and blah blah blah, you know. So We build a custom machine for them and I'd set up the whole thing. I did the whole network for them. And Fabian will go around and source the components.

uh that we needed. To put these PCs together. And just to to to be clear, this was you were kind of doing this out of your home. Like in your garage. Yes. And how would you find people who could order them from you? How would you identify any customers? Friends and family, really. It was right. There was no dollars dedicated to advertising or anything like that. It was like oh

Nelson knows how to do this computer stuff. Exactly. Nelson, you know about computers, right? Can you can you build one for my friend uh Joe over here? So I became that guy in the group. You know the guy in the group? Yeah. That's the guy. He's the computer he's the guy. He's the guy. Uh so um then What was interesting was eight. Can you build me a PC for For gaming. Can we optimize it for

Yeah, why not? So I built A couple of machines. One was for Alex's Uh father in law. Okay.

We built it for him and we built one for Hector. And what did they said, hey, I want a computer that can Do like what was the difference between just for people to know, like a gaming PC in nineteen ninety five or ninety six, what's the difference between that and just a regular Mm. PC build.

Well, we tried you know, we had a couple of friends that did have HPs and whatnot and and they it just it didn't work right. It was very cumbersome. I mean the you had the video card was very important. It's always been very important, right? The video card and the motherboard and whatnot. I I f I felt that there was more quality with the motherboards and the memory and all the components that all I was picking. And even though people would say, Oh, it's supposed to work together and you know, whatever

It didn't Exactly work that way. So didn't work with other components. Yeah, I felt my I felt that there were there needed to be compatibility amongst peripherals and I kind of identified what those were. For gaming. So that they worked well. In a gaming environment

Because Believe it or not, I mean, again, it's supposed to work together. It's it's Windows based. Uh everybody's all the drivers are supposed to work together. That was not the case. Right. So I I tried to make a system Where they

It was Dependable. And it was fast. All right, so you've got this business. And and by the way, I mean, there's a lot of labor that goes into that, you know, building a P C getting a b I mean, today you you know, you can build one in a in an hour, but then I'm assuming this was many, many hours of work.

m per you know, maybe days per computer Right. But back then the especially the computer chassis were Man, they were flay were they were not built With quality. Okay. And they were like You know, they were cheap.

And And what happened was I would cut myself I mean it was like a I was fighting a demon every time I went into a computer and and and you know tried building it. It was literally a fight for my life. There was blood, there was you know it was uh I mean, were you guys making any money, you and Fabian? Absolutely nothing.

What are you gonna say? Absolutely boatload. No, no, zero dollars. If anything, we probably lost money on the ordeal. Uh the support it's I mean I would I routinely, I would have to go to people's offices. Because uh what's the other problem here? The other problem is uh you know, uh guess what? The Internet was

Very new. the programs they were work they didn't know how to use them correctly. Yeah. They they didn't know how to configure a network, so therefore they had no idea what a network is and how it works. So there was a lot of troubleshooting And I found myself going to a lot of these places and saying, Man, this is not worth it. This is not this is you were selling the PCs, but then you were the tech support too, which you probably didn't realize that was gonna happen. They were calling it like Nelson, my computer's down, what's going on? You're like, Oh you're like building this other P C now you gotta stop and like help

Troubleshoot that thing. For that person Absolutely. Yeah. It it was tough. It was tough. I I gotta say it was real tough. Yeah. Yeah. But if the business wasn't making money. How are you gonna make it sustainable? I mean, that's what I'm trying to figure out. Because you knew that you were probably losing money'cause you're you know, you had to be competitive with your prices.

You know, I think I I think I gotta admit something. I I'm not that bright. Uh You are very bright. No, but anyway seriously I I you know, I I kind of ignored the whole thing. And then I you know, I kind of ignored it and then I ha I have you know, I'm looking at Fabian and I'm I'm punching myself and I'm saying man, this there's gotta be a better way. So I said I I And I gotta tell you, there was already a company around

That was doing this already back back in the day. Falcon North West. Okay, Falcon Northwest. Okay, yeah. Uh we we became very familiar with them. They became one of our competitors. But I also saw them advertising. On

Uh one of the magazines. I think it was Computer Gaming World or P C Gamer back then. Yeah. So I uh At this point I'm saying, man, you know, we did the we did the creative gaming designs which was pro wrestler and we did it through Mail Order. Oh wait a second, why don't we just, you know, put a little ad somewhere in a magazine like these guys do.

And so our services of putting PCs together. And what did the ad say? Well, well. The ad was It was strange, I gotta tell you, it was strange because I said I said I've gotta appeal to the nerds like me and Alex and you know and all our friends. So

The first ad we did was that of a weird looking alien, okay? Hovering over a PC with all the the configuration of, you know, what parts we were gonna use and and and and and the sum total. But I wanna go a little bit if you don't mind, I'll I'll tell you a little the funny story about how Alien World came to be. Okay.

I'm a big UFO guy. I'm a big UFO enthusiast. I've always been. Yeah, are they real? Do they exist? Uh in my mind you're you know, you're Absolutely, a hundred percent. There's a different episode that we'll do. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The UFO episode. So uh and so is Alex. Alex is a big UFO enthusiast and he even to this day. So I also knew, I kinda knew that I wanted my Like

the company name to start with an A. Because that way we would be first in the yellow pages or we'd be That was right. By the way, this was a common thing. My brother in law called us Use the word American in his company'cause he'd be first in the the binding business. Absolutely. Well I know y yeah, I wanna know the story'cause I know that this is round ninety seven. Yes. And you recruited you basically went to your friend Alex Aguila and you said, Okay

I need you to join me. Well, So It it's already like nineteen ninety yeah, nineteen late ninety seven, eight early ninety eight, I guess. And then uh so I I

I call Alex. And I say yeah. And he picks up the phone email and hey what's up, what's up? Uh, listen, I got this name for a company. And

We're gonna do the same thing, but we're gonna use the s the model that we have for creative gaming designs. And let's just sell mail order computers. I saw his company called Falk and do it and they're in computer gaming or P C gaming. Why can't we do it?

So uh he goes, Yeah, what are you gonna call it? I go, How about alienware? He goes, Wow, that's a pretty cool name. Yeah, and And Alex and myself are pretty realistic. If you would have said nah

I would have kind of like Listen to that. Yeah, I w I would have taken it seriously. Yeah. But he when Alex and myself say yes at the same time It's dangerous because it really does mean it it's gonna be

It's gonna be okay. I go, but here's the thing, Alex. You're gonna need to Drop your job. You're gonna need to leave your job.

You're gonna have to bring it up. Like I don't know, five thousand I I don't know if it was five thousand dollars or six thousand dollars because I would put the other six thousand dollars in. You needed him to invest five thousand dollars in your company and join you. Yes. Yeah.

Listen, it was credit card debt. We didn't have any ca when I say hey Al, you need to bring five thousand dollars He didn't like Yeah, you don't have any cash. Yeah.

So I tell I call Alex, I tell him this is the the proposition and he goes Did I tomorrow. Well. Uh oh okay. Let's do it.

When we come back in just a moment. How Nelson and his team break into the PC gaming market, and why their credit card companies start to suspect They're running a shady business. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Roz. So it's 1998 and Nelson's childhood friend Alex has agreed to quit his job and join Alienware. And at this point, Nelson is looking to get the word out about his new gaming computer.

And he manages to get it reviewed by a small publication, which is a pretty big accomplishment. I don't know who I spoke to. And I said, Well, I got this company, I've got this machine, and I want you guys to check it out. I'm it's a game. Oh, it's a game computer. And I think that's what got them interested. There were not that many gaming computers being made at the time. No, there was only Falcon. There was only this crazy. No none of these big P C companies, IBM and Dell and H P and Compaq were making gaming. They were only making PCs for Yep.

Office workers and students and yeah. And the consumer the consumer PC back then was probably Gateway Micron. Compact, but they were you know, they they weren't optimized for g they were doing uh big volumes and you know whatnot. So so this was a completely under the radar thing. And yet there was this culture or subculture of magazines and gamers who were

built by their friends at these mom and pop shops. Yes, yes. They were there. We were there, you know? And then there was the software developers that were Introducing the world to three D gaming. Mm-hmm. I just felt that wow man, this is so exc you know, honestly, I didn't even care about making money.

The overriding factor for me was more so Wow. А іно, десь со ку. This is absolutely so cool. There's gonna be you know, maybe I'll have a customer or two out there You know, maybe in Oregon or in Washington State or New York or somewhere.

You know, playing on one of my computers. A video game that that person's gonna love. You know, what greater joy is that, you know? Yeah. So I think I think you get a a pretty good review in in this one magazine in Boot magazine, but um

I guess it's it's kind of small. publication right. So So from what I gather you decide to send another computer to another Magazine to P C Gamer and the which is bigger. And I guess this time you also take an ad out, right? Like like in the same magazine?

Right. So We said in the machine. The machine was like the most glorious piece of machinery And hey, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna do an advertisement. The advertisement back then for a full page

was five thousand dollars. And how'd you pay for that? They also gave us net terms, I think. I go, Oh wow, okay, good cool net terms. Let me put a credit card on this and or whatever. You know, I don't know. You know, I'm not a gambler, but I definitely gambled on that one. We gambled on that one because Between the machine.

The rent. The uh the the advertisement. I mean we We were clearly way beyond our means already. W you you mentioned this beautiful P C. I mean obviously the chassis was

off the shelf, but how did you make it beautiful? What did you do to it? It was such a complicated machine. It had One two D card. Two three D cards, three D uh three D FX Voodoo cards and Sly. Yeah.

Yeah. Uh Sound cards. Okay. It had

Two hard drives and SCSI well I had s uh it had a raid controller. Uh for for the the hard drives and and and tan to make them faster. Uh memory up the Gazum. Uh by the way, that machine costs us money. That was that was a big investment. Yeah, how much how much would that that machine cost us? I mean, back then it cost like six thousand, seven thousand dollars. Wow. And and you could not buy a P C like this off the shelf in nineteen ninety. No, there's no way. There's no way.

It's lunacy. It's just so amazing because the there were big companies out there who just this was happening under their their nose. I know. Alright, so you build this thing. components. Yes. Just kinda cherry picking the best things. And making like a a Maserati A custom hot rod. Yeah. Custom hot rod. It's a custom hot rod. That's what you were doing. And these these chop shops exist, right? You can get a custom hot rod today. Exactly. Um and Ford and Chrysler and the you know. Tesla, they're not making custom hot rods'cause I mean I mean I was looking I just was b before before this interview is just looking at prices for like an I Mac at that time.

Uh,'cause you're you're talking about f five, six, seven thousand dollars for what you were building. Yeah. But I'm Aquas. one thousand two hundred ninety nine dollars and ninety eight. PCs desktop PCs at that time were like five hundred bucks. I know. So this was a premium product for a very specific kind of customer. This is not a mass product. Yeah. Yeah. It was a tough you know, it was a tough proposition.

But only those that could appreciate it. Appreciated it. Yeah. the power of this PC once they loaded up their favorite game. I I mean we would give them a range of things. Like okay, you can only pick from these three motherboards.

You can only pick, you know, and Let's say an Uh from these two manufacturers in terms of uh memory. But they had the ability to create themselves their own machine.

I mean it is It is it is kind of remarkable. Here here's This like group of like Cuban American kids, right? In Miami. Not a tech center by any means, certainly at that time. Yep. Uh.

Uh like building these gaming PCs and and like yeah. Crazy. I go back in time and I go, What What what were we thinking of? Wha what's going on here? Yeah. And and by the way, when when that review came out in P C game or how how was it? Was it favorable?

Uh, we gotta Great review. What they say. He loved the machine He called it an eight hundred pound gorilla.

And he won he says, I I I'm not gonna give it back to them. There's no way. I love this machine. Because the guy's a gamer himself. Wow. And uh we had the ad and then we got we got a couple of orders and then we noticed I already started using pr I started getting a little proficient with the web stuff. We noticed that there was some traffic But back then all we did was cam you could configure the machine online, but you couldn't order it. W could you could go to the website and you could design what you wanted but you couldn't order it. You had to call in and say, This is what I want to do.

So uh ask for to answer the phone and take the order and and all that good stuff. And we did okay. We did like I don't know. Fifte machines that month. Whatever. Well, and that's like at five three to five thousand dollars a pot, that's pretty good. Yeah, yeah no. Actually, back then uh it was the the machines were averaging closer to s six or seven thousand dollars. Okay, so so Nelson.

Up to this point, it was it was pretty much you and Alex and Fabian who are running Alienware, but but we're gonna uh pause for a second. Uh because th this is when another key person enters the business. That is Frank Azor. And Frank is actually Here with us, he's been sitting here listening to our conversation quietly and patiently. And but by the way, Frank, i have you learned anything you didn't uh know listening to Nelson? Oh yeah. I've learned a ton. This has been this has been awesome, actually. Okay, so Frank, I think you were like what, like seventeen? Like a kid, I shouldn't say kid, I guess, but you were a teenager

And uh this is the late nineties. I and I I believe what, you you join this budding group of Three guys called Alienware is that is it is it right? Yeah, it was uh nineteen ninety eight. I was sixteen years old. Sixteen, okay. A junior in high school. And and where w where and you grew up in Miami too? Yeah, born and raised in Miami. Very similar

Upbringing to Nelson, Alex and and the whole gang. Cuban parents, immigrants or grandparents? Oh Cuban parents uh they came over a little later than Nelson's, they came in nineteen fifty nine. And and by the way Were you a good student? I mean I would think Probably you were. I was not. Um

But my father ran an exper my parents ran an experiment on me in high school. And uh they said if you get straight A's, we'll buy you a car. And suddenly I realized that I could be a phenomenal student and I can get straight A's. And that's when I realized how coin operated I am. And and how did you connect with these guys? How did you even know what they were doing? So uh a mutual friend that we didn't know was a mutual friend, um, was a friend of my sister and her and her husband, my brother in law. Yeah.

And one day I'm at their house. Um again I'm in high school. I'm a junior in high school and he was there. I tell him I'm building computers now. Almost exactly the same story as uh as Nelson and Alex. I was building it for friends and family. And he told me that he was working with uh a few guys that were that started a computer company.

And I go, Oh man, that sounds incredible. I'd love to you know get to meet them and he's like Actually they're hiring So um he handed me uh Uh you know, like a post it note. with uh the name of the company, Alien Were P C. And uh Alex Agla's phone number on it. I still have that sticky note till today.

And then I called and we set up an interview for I don't know, some day during the week. And they asked me to be there like at twelve or one. I'm like, Actually uh can I show up at three? Yeah, and and and right,'cause you were at high school. And what were they looking for, did you know? Uh somebody who was m older, mature, had a lot of experience. Everything I wasn't Okay. So I I I walk in and there's some guy with a long ponytail sitting to the right on a couch when I walk into this office, and then I see these two other guys. Um one of them is Nelson, one of them is Alex. Who is the guy with a ponytail? That was Fabian. Um Fabian, okay. Yeah. And they look at me like I'm a uh

And Alex would admit to me later that that was the moment he realized they needed to start locking the front door so uh weird strangers wouldn't walk in. And uh and I'd said, Hey, uh, you know, I'm um Frank and uh you know, I think Max talked to you about me. And they're like Oh no, you're ver you're you're too young for this. We want somebody with a lot more experience. And uh I said, Well actually I'm here already and I'm willing to work for free, so why don't you uh at least talk to me? Wow. Yeah. And it's funny'cause Nelson talks about confidence, right? And I don't know where all that confidence came, but like the confidence to walk through that door and to sit down, even though they were kinda pushing me out the door. Um, it was just something that I had at the time.

And uh I think I got'em when I offered to work for free. Um that was the killer line. But uh it worked out and they called me the next day and asked me to join. And all right, and so this became your after school job. Yep. I would leave school at two twenty PM and I'd rush over to Alienware get there before three. And then we would end every day at seven. and basically just b building PCs.

So Fabian would build them and then uh When I joined Nelson built a checklist of everything he wanted me to check on the computer to make sure that it was built correctly. And then uh I would load all the drivers on the computer. And what we would do is really cool, we would actually tell customers they could send us their games, they could send us their joystick, their game pads, whatever hardware they wanted pre-configured on the computer, they can mail it to us. We would install and configure everything for them. So that when they received the computer they just turned it on and all the work was done. It was a fully turnkey system. So all right, Nelson, it's just the four of you guys still at this point.

And uh and and I guess it's a sustainable I mean, it's kind of you can handle the workload, right? Because it's like ninety eight and What you're building. Two, three PCs, four PCs a week. Five, ten, maybe. Yeah. Maybe eight eight to ten PCs a week. But I I I should I I wanna just visualize the environment for one thing. It was a two story building.

Tiny little office. How many square feet was it, Nelson? It's tiny. Uh These decisions pre dated me, but somebody decided, and it must have been Nelson that that we were gonna build the computers on the second floor. And then we were gonna walk them down the stairs. Keep in mind these computers weighed fifty, sixty pounds. Yeah. Heavy. So this sixteen year old kid would walk down the stairs carrying this fifty, sixty pound computer. And then we would package it.

on the first floor. So we would put it in a box and then put, you know, foam and all that and then package it again. Well, um Alex would be on the phone trying to sell computers and Nelson would be on the other phone next to him trying to do tech support for customers, right? And then Fabian and I would be trying to package the computer, but the tape gun would make so much noise as you were putting the tape on the boxes. Yeah, we had to wait until the two of them were off the phone so we could tape the boxes. And uh so we'd just sit be sitting on the couch waiting for the phone calls to end, and then we'd tape them. And then we'd uh yeah, we'd ship'em out every day. Yeah.

But one of the things that made life really interesting for us was we were A small company in Miami. Taking orders. That we would You know.

We At least Book fifty percent of of of the order on the credit card and then the remaining balance when it's shipped out. So of course the banks were all freaking out

What is this company doing? They're in Miami. Oh God, the world's coming to an end. They thought you were in something uh uh unsavory. They would oh no, we have to keep the monies in reserve. Because there's fraud. What fraud? There's no fraud. I mean we were the fraud was insignificant at our level because everybody was I mean, they were seriously ordering the machines and we would

Do our due diligence with the the the the sale. Yeah. Uh but we also had the difficulties of dealing in Miami Uh because you know the nobody knew what was you know, they didn't understand the business model. So imagine that And you call the credit card companies and you ask them, why aren't you sending us the money? And they'd be like, Oh, we have to hold it for sixty days to make sure this is legitimate. And we're trying to run a business. We have to you know you y you have to buy parts, you have to pay yourself, you have to pay rent, you have to pay services.

And uh yeah, they would hold the money for however long they wanted to hold it for because they thought the business wasn't legitimate. But I mean the model If did work if the if you did get the money right away was great because You got the money to buy.

U you didn't have to hold inventory, right? You could just get an order in and then you'd go get the parts you needed and then make the machine. For the most part, as our volumes began to grow, it was getting more and more challenging. We used to do some pretty uh insane things to get parts. I remember a new graphics card had just launched and we couldn't get any of them and uh we Send every employee with their credit card to every electronics boutique in Miami and in

North uh Broward. And we asked them to go buy the maximum amount of graphics cards that the retailer would sell them and then we'd reimburse them uh on their credit card after they uh you know, they they brought the cart the graphics cards back. Um, but you know, we were small. We were really small. We were arguably insignificant and uh uh these parts were in high demand in many cases. And sometimes you'd be competing against the big companies like Adele or M HP for something like memory or for a motherboard or for a processor.

We have an incredible story about when AMD launched the first g one gigahertz processor We couldn't get our hands on it. So Uh Nelson Erotics came up with the idea, just buy a bunch of gateways. that have the processor in it, wow we'll take out the one gigahertz processor, we'll put a cheaper two or three hundred dollar processor that we can get, and then we'll put that one gigahertz processor inside our systems. I mean we did crazy things like that. And what would you do with the gateway computers? We'd use them around the office for desktops. For corporate like for your work station. You'd use it as your office PC.

Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I'm just what you were able to do, despite being tiny, a drop in the bucket, right, early on, which was The big PC companies They could make cheap PCs. You guys couldn't. You were not able to make cheap PCs.

You didn't have the connections, you didn't have the supply chains, you didn't have the You know, you didn't have the capital to scale that, but you could make expensive PCs. Because that was possible to do and to charge a lot of money for expensive PCs, which the Big PC makers.

They were looking to reduce their prices. Exactly. What we were doing was selling four PCs in one. Yeah. You know, we were commanding that much uh money from those PCs. was providing the

customer with the service that the big companies really couldn't do. They were so configured Sure. No customization or low personalization, let's call it that. and high rate of manufacturing that Well we were we were configured completely opposite of that from day one.

And that ultimately was I think the the one of the biggest competitive advantages that we had. And then there was a lot of secret sauce in that, like You know, because we were smaller, we were we had access to certain components and ultra high tech and emerging technologies that weren't ready for mass scale and mass adoption. Yeah. So That we used our size to our advantage. Were you guys able in the late nineties to get

A line of credit? from a bank or any loans to Just to shore up, you know. Your supplies or to Or did you even try?

Yes, we did. Um there was one banker That we spoke to that got it. She got she was an older lady. We explained the circumstances. She came to the office. She saw what we were doing. She saw we were busy and we couldn't I mean we're pulling our hairs. And she goes, You know what? Tomorrow.

You get the loan. She came. She drew up a check for fifty thousand dollars, we signed the documents and You know, we needed that money for the operational part of the business. Uh so she was a godsend. She was the only one really. Yeah. Wow.

And and What at what point? Right,'cause Frank, you join. in ninety eight, and it's still the four of you. But but obviously that was not gonna last because you had to you would get in more orders would come in and you would need more than

two people building PCs at a certain point. What What was the what was the tipping point? What what happened? Like w was it a slow burn or did it all of a sudden just start Order should start. to pour in that made it impossible for just the two of you to build the computers.

Yeah, I think uh the the the inflection point was Uh when we evolve the website. So that customers could actually order it. Right. Um you know and

That Is when Things started going from like twenty, thirty computers to Fifty, then seventy, then a hundred. The the challenge is the numbers still sound small, but you have to understand it's exponential growth. You're like doubling like one month.

Wow. you know, as the business grew and you know, Nelson Alex started hiring more employees, um, we would outgrow every single space. And then what ended up happening is by the time they were able to find The next parcel of real estate. To keep up with our growth, and we would build it out. and move in, we were never able to move out of the last building that we were in because the business just kept growing so fast. So it was always an idea of we're gonna move from this old building to the new building. But by the time the new building was ready to move into

We were so big we could never leave the old buildings and that basically happened forever until Uh to the last one, to the last one. Yeah. That we finally got a ride. And all right, so but but really you were still even in the early two thousands. Under the radar, right? There was no The big guys, the big players were not

In fact, I think at this point in the early 2000s, the big computer companies were in crisis. Because There was so much competition, the price of PCs was so low. They I mean the I mean, this is when IBM was thinking about and and eventually did s sold off its computer. Uh division. Stop making computers. Sold it to Lenovo.

There was a quite a bit of pressure back then for them. But they didn't understand our market. They uh had no Idea. Um

That this market But grow. So fast. And that there were so many people. That were

Closet gamers, if you will. There were moms and dads and kids of all ages and college grads and We were appealing to a lot of people. It was a bit of a golden age because

As we were coming up as a hardware provider Two gamers, some of the greatest games ever created. Um were also coming up. You had uh obviously, you know, John Carmack at id d developing the Doom series and the Quake series. Um you had uh Tim Sweeney and and Mark Rain at Epic creating uh Unreal

And then at the same time You had Microsoft taking notice of all of this and saying they're gonna get into the gaming space with the Xbox. Yeah. Yeah, for a while. As much as that was a threat to P C gaming and the death of P C gaming was pronounced

It also was a huge opportunity because they spent billions on marketing and advertising and they'd brought the the Halo franchise um which was a first person shooter game that was or exclusively on the PC. All first person shooter genres were pretty much always on computer gaming. They brought that over to console gaming for the first time. And suddenly this platform of consoles, which had tens of millions of gamers out there, you know, from Atari and even before Atari.

We're playing PC level games. And that was a big inflection point as well. But everything was happening all at the same time. You know, and there there's another component to this Aside from the gaming and the customization and all the good stuff, we poured a lot of personality into the P C. The only guys that were really doing something

Interesting with the P C that gave it a design, gave it a life, was Apple. Yeah. Be beautiful, right? Came out in the late nineties or the early two thousands, yeah. Was game changer, those giant monitors that were blue and translucent. Yeah.

Exactly. So there was no P C maker out there that was really doing that. They were just boring being colored bucks. So we Made a decision. You know, we're gonna we're gonna Do some cutting edge stuff, not only inside the box, but outside the box.

We're gonna give this machine A personality like a car. Like a Ferrari. Like a Porsche. So we started doing that with the P C and Doing what? Well we started we first we had different color scapes of like uh plasma purple, Martian red, lunar white. W and it was the c and it was the color of the actual metallic chassis or was like Like lights.

We had contracted a body shop. That basically painted cars. Going back to the hot rod analogy we were making earlier, they were painting these Cases and we did keyboards monitor speakers. So you would buy the cases that were off the shelf, but you would paint them. We would send him to a body shop in Miami.

Or actually initially we send it to one in Minnesota. Okay. And then they would paint them and then we'd ship them down. Eventually Alex was like, This is too expensive shipping things back and forth because he was in supply chain and operations. So we moved them down here and they set up a body shop down here in Miami. Next to us. Next to us. Right behind the warehouse. Yeah. A anywhere. was is still um one of the few brands that has like a personality behind it where you can cover up the logo and know immediately that that is an alienware product. And you know, people don't buy it.

purely because of its function. They buy it because okay, it performs a function, but it has a style. It represents me. It says something about me as the the purchaser of that product. And that was very similar to Apple back then. Apple was you know, very similar creative creative people. Right. The creative people, the rebellious people, the whole campaign they had. Around that.

Um, alienware was the closest thing you had to something like that in the PC world, in the PC spectrum. Yeah. I mean, obviously you were getting attention for what you were doing, but certainly when when you were one of the very few businesses doing this. But but by the time this became cle it

to to you know Dell for example and other big computer makers that there there was money to be made there. They got into this game. And you guys I think when when Dell really got in in two thousand three, you were Yeah, you were probably doing

you know, fifty, sixty million dollars a year in revenue, maybe a little bit more. So you were doing a significant amount, but but Not like nothing. I mean you had a brand But but now the big companies are coming in and and building these

really good gaming PCs that you could buy at and they had a better distribution. Some of'em were available at Best Buy and all these other places. That must have been a little concerning, even though you had a good brand What how were you going to I mean, were you guys nervous at all?

No, not at all. You were nervous. Okay. When Dell got in, we were and Okay. Of course you're nervous. The the the only reason I said Dell. was because Dell we mimicked Dell's business model. We didn't reinvent the wheel. Right. You b you built Dell's model was you ordered a custom made P C and they would send it to you. Yes. But hey, we also

You know, we were also growing. So I always felt that hey, you know, if given the right uh funding and and and we could You know, get some good hires and make a a and develop a supply chain with which is the hard part. With the uh the east, then hey.

We really do have a chance. When we come back in just a moment. Nelson and Frank keep an eye on their biggest competitor. Which, as it turns out is watching them too.

Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's around 2004 and Alienware has become one of the fastest growing private companies in the US. It's doing over a hundred million dollars in revenue and has like

Five hundred employees. But That kind of growth? can be really hard. It was pretty tough, I gotta tell you. I mean

We you know, we talk about growth as being oh, it's great and you know you see that ticker you remember that U P S commercial where you saw that ticker, the orders started coming in. Well that's a problem too, right? I mean if you don't if you don't have the infrastructure. Then you could blow that brand away. I mean it's gonna you're gonna have bad service, uh all sorts of bad things happen. One of the things that we did was the little

That we managed To keep for ourselves We always reinvest it in the business. We never we were never top heavy. Uh we didn't uh we took uh you know average salaries

We didn't give ourselves big bonuses. We sold To the employees also that Hey, there'll be time for that. That will happen, but I need you guys to do it with us. Yeah. So um you know, but we were we were pretty successful managing the expectation and the growth.

Well tell me about uh the relationship between The the the four Sort of original. I mean, I'm not going to be able to Uh obviously you're still friends with Alex.

Um And the two of you are friends and you haven't worked together for a long time. We're gonna get to that in a moment, what happened to Alienware, but Um did you Did you all kind of uh

uh everybody kinda have their lane and focus on that and was there ever any tension or Or You know, different views about where to go and which directions to take. what I learned was that I didn't not ha I was not your typical CEO because I just didn't have the the training or the business acumen or whatever. But if there was a disagreement, if there was debate, then fine. I w actually I welcomed it a lot. I I wanted to hear all the bad stuff first and

You know, all the negative Uh news first and then let's focus on how we get better. Yeah. Yeah, so we we And everybody for the most they knew it was a lot of work. There was a lot of work involved, especially us that

We just didn't have the the the the typical tools that A a perhaps uh an MBA coming out of school would have But we figured it out, uh, and then we we were smart enough to hire People that were smarter than us.

But you mentioned contention. Um I think one of the greatest uh assets that we had at Alienware is how different Nelson and Alex are and were, um and how much they debated uh every issue. They rarely ever saw eye to eye. And the beauty of that was that we would see almost every angle of a challenge or a decision that we had to make because they saw it always differently.

And Finally they would debate it out and you know, I remember that my first day on the job I could hear them screaming downstairs and I'm a brand new employee and I look over to Fabian and I go, What what's going on? And he goes, Don't worry about it. But it was that contention and that debate and those per those different perspectives. That helped us arrive at really good decisions. And ultimately, I think had we not had that.

Um, we probably wouldn't have been as successful as we were. All right. You guys are Obviously, you know, you built this thing. in a garage, l you know, in your house and and and

Less than ten years in You consider going public? But ultimately. you get an acquisition offer from you w from Dell, from your biggest competitor, from the evil empire, obviously. And he's Michael Dell's been on the show. But but but you must have been like

They were your competitor. You probably th saw them as an evil competitor. No, I didn't. No, you didn't. I saw them as As My long lost brother, you know, the Romulans and the Vulcans. Uh if any can anybody can understand that out there, you know, they they were we were very similar. We had the same model. So

The first time XPS comes out. Their their XPS is two thousand and one or two, or maybe four or two thousand well. Maybe this was Closer to two thousand three, Frank? Yep. Okay. Yeah. Well, I I sent a a note to Michael. Right. thinking I'm never gonna get a response. I said okay, Michael at Dell dot com, sure enough, but whatever.

Uh maybe I shouldn't have said that on the air. It's not hard to figure these out. Yeah, yeah. So um I sent him an email. And I did this one on my own. I just said, you know, I'm a I am a little bit concerned. I'm a little bit concerned because this is a big guy and he's in our space. And I should be I should be concerned. But I said I'm gonna be very cordial about this whole thing. Yep. Hey Michael, this is Nelson, I just wanna welcome you on board. You're giving a lot of visibility to the gaming market. I appreciate it, blah blah blah. Oh so you're welcoming into h him into your space. Yeah. You were like you jerk, you're coming you were like, Hey, welcome, you know, um

Keep your friends close, but keep your enemer. I mean so I said okay, so and So we exchanged email e by the way, he responded within minutes. And you don't keep in touch with them, that was it. Just a cordial exchange. Exactly, exactly. And we we exchange maybe a couple of emails about a couple things, but we don't nothing nothing major. So two thousand six comes around. I think what happened was and I and I I don't wanna speak for Michael but we probably got wind of you know us growing uh and us going public. And uh at that point he he sends me an email and he says, Hey, do you want to meet?

Um you know, in Orlando I go, sure. And he goes, Bring Alex, let's let's sit down and talk. So we met in Orlando and Those guys, I wanna buy you out. And I'm like, okay. I'm thinking why do you want to buy something?

You know what's going on, but Well I I think that You guys are doing great. I've always admired your company and You're doing the right thing, he recognized the value in the brand. And this came out of the blue. You had no idea.

This is gonna be. No, you did not know you were not soliciting this. No. I think uh I wanna buy you guys. Yeah. Did he put a number on the table at that time?

He put a number on the table that it worked. I mean the number didn't well, the the funny thing is that We come to terms. He He sends his guys over

They start doing the due diligence Then A month or two into it. All of a sudden Michael sends you know. calls me and says, Hey, we're gonna have to pull out

Wow. You're gonna pull out now. After knowing everything we were doing. And how we run our business and books. Are you crazy?

I didn't say anything, I kept my mouth shut, I I kept cool. I said, Okay. You gotta do what you gotta do and I gotta do what I gotta do. Yeah, why did they pull out? Well, I guess he wanted to, you know, they he presented it to the board. You know, I'm sure the board said gaming, what is gaming? Are you guys crazy? You're enterprise, you're you know, you don't need this, blah, blah, blah. You know, that typical board stuff. Yeah.

And uh And he was he he really Did love us. He know he I almost felt like he was a one of our customers. But I'm saying well.

Yeah. Whatever it's meant to be is meant to be. We're gonna go now, we're gonna present and we're gonna go public. That's it. I get a phone call, unknown caller. I'm driving to dinner with my wife. This is two thousand and six. This is two thousand six.

I get this call from Unknown. I know unknown means Michael. So I get the phone call and then we start talking, talks about a number, I say another number, he says, Okay I says, Hey, this time we we have a deal, right? And he goes, Yes, absolutely. And we made the deal happen. Then he asked me he asked me, What do you want to do, Nelson? Do you want to stay You wanna be incorporated to the doll machine.

Or do you wanna You know, be your own You know, entity. And Pick from us what you need when you need it.

The challenge was I wanted to make anywhere a little bit bigger, so no, I wanna incorporate. I wanna incorporate into your Supply chain mechanism. I want to You know Get in there so that we can grow the eating more business.

So it present it with challenges and stuff, it's hard. I mean it it's uh but Honestly, they did a phenomenal job of preserving the blanc the brand. W when he when that came to you, or obviously you were gonna make a lot of money. the the the founders are gonna make a ton of money. This is gonna be a Uh it's an undisclosed acquisition, but I I can imagine

what it was given what your revenue is. You do some calculations and figure out roughly w how much you got. Was in your view At that time,'cause I think I probably would have done that. Was it part?

I'm just I'm tired. I've been doing this for so long. I just need a break. Was that part of it, too? No.

No, no. I was ready. I was ready for the next I was I was gearing up for the next level. So so to you it was Dell was gonna be with their supply chains with their uh, you know, marketing chops with their massive scale. You were thinking. we're gonna use their resources to grow even bigger. And now we're gonna be part of Dell, but but we can only do this if we have access to massive resources like like the resources they have.

Exactly, exactly. But what I soon found out That I'm not a corporate guy. Yeah. 'Cause you were hired to be a Dell employee now and now you're the CEO of a Dell portfolio company. Yeah. And I you know, Alex and myself and

Especially Alex myself. Couldn't f we weren't gonna fit in. You you weren't you weren't part you weren't you don't want to go to the meetings, you don't want to Yeah, there was a lot of corporate, you know, like requests and a lot of uh decisions that would take a long time because There was a lot of analysis that had to be done, understandably slow. So it was a public uh company. And I understand that, but

Man, I kinda wanted to move at the speed of light and they just the the they're an aircraft carrier and we're like a little P T boat. Yeah. So U you know, one of the things that Alex Alex was tired, Alex was you know, was did Do a lot of work. He was very tired.

Uh I I was tired as well, but I was ready for the challenge. But Alex said, Listen, man, I I I don't think I could do this and once Alex says that I'm like Mm. I'm not gonna do this without Alex, it's gonna be very, very difficult and I just don't wanna do it. So

That's where it ended. Yeah. So Nelson you left. You you and Alex left Alienware, I think at roughly the same time. Uh and Frank you stayed on. In fact you stay on in uh in a leadership role at Dell.

Uh, I think until just a few years ago. Uh, but I mean I mean, Nelson, back then I mean I I think it was two thousand seven when you left Alienware and I wonder Did you Did you go through a period of just like Sadness or I don't know, uh depression, or you know, like w what do I do now?

Yeah, I was depressed for like two years. It was tough. I was going a hundred miles an hour. And uh Every day and then all of a sudden Hm.

You know, because I you know Alex. Alex? can adopt very well because he he's got so many hobbies and he Alex is like a machine. He just he he's got a million things going on.

But I am very singularly focused. Your hobby was your job. My hobby was my job. Yeah. And and that's amazing, see if people don't No I people just think, Oh wow, you get all this money I pr people are probably thinking that about you. You're loaded, you got you got everything set, you're you're set for life, and here you are, you're actually depressed.

Yeah, I you know, I uh I was brought up From pretty humble beginnings, money obviously is important. But Uh It's never been

V Most important thing in my life. I felt that I was contributing something. Um Two people, and that's what I that's what drove me.

Mm. Nelson is a a creator. Um he used to create the Alienware ads. most of the product, if not all the product innovations that you saw. at alienware, the industrial design was all really being fed from from Nelson's mind. And you know, th that creative outlet was was now gone. It wasn't it wasn't there anymore.

Um, but I mean everything you still see to today, I mean the the the industrial design characteristics of alienware as they've as they're still carried through There's components and elements of all of that that uh that that came from. He was the visionary Behind all of these things. Um but uh in a lot of ways uh you know alienware is is Nelson. Um Gee, thanks Frank. I I should hire you to uh speak for me. Um so Frank, you

You stayed on. uh for a long time. He only left Dell in in twenty nineteen. Yep. And then uh when you left you you would you you were the vice president Uh the GM for premium consumer brands. Big.

Big massive job at Dell. So you really I mean, y a and you kind of oversaw the growth, the explosive growth of Alienware I mean, to the point where now It's like They make Gaming chairs and uh headset. I the gaming chairs thing still boggles my mind that that's a whole

But I mean, really, like you oversaw this This uh massive G growth of this brand for the next what? W how long were you there? Uh almost fifteen years. Fourteen years. Yep. Long time. It goes by fast. And and tell me what I mean

You know, it's kind of Platform? You were able to take a Alien were to the next level?

Um it wasn't that easy. Uh Initially when Dell acquired Alienware, we were still competing against XPS gaming because XP S was their gaming brand. Yeah. So mission number one was to survive that.

With the hope that they wouldn't shut you down and just take your technology or take your your people. Correct. Correct. Uh you know, to the the the P C industry is extremely challenging. It's very competitive. You have hyper competitive people. And um you had two You know, pe sets of people now trying to um win against the same customer, trying to win the same customer. Wow. So you're internally competing with your colleagues now.

Yes, and we are dependent upon them because, uh, to Nelson's point, right, we immediately recognized the benefit of leveraging their supply chain and their operations, and uh the competitor piece was definitely Awkward. The cultural differences were so stark. Um you know, Alien Aware was all about just We gotta do whatever we gotta do to get the job done. And going to a large company, that was fifty thousand employees by the time I uh I had uh joined.

Was a completely different world with tons of an analysts and all this research and all these well educated uh professionals and enormous experience and just this carefulness and this thoughtfulness to every decision that's made. And that Was very different, a completely different environment, and it was extremely intimidating.

Um Very, very scary, very uncomfortable. suddenly I felt like I was back in kindergarten almost, like starting at ground zero where I had to learn A big company, and I had no experience with that. And it was a different language, it was everything, everything was different about it.

Then it became okay, once we was pretty clear that we were going to survive. Then how did we could shift from surviving to thriving? And that took a little bit of time to go off and figure out. And um And we figured it out. I mean, but the whole time You know what I'd say is

Yeah. We built this thing, you know, Nelson Alex, uh more than anybody, I built this baby, if you will. And You don't wanna let it die you don't want to let it not prosper and see it

recognize its full potential. Yeah. Um When you guys think about

About this journey. Right. You know, this this thing has started in ninety six, ninety seven, garage. sold for, you know, who knows how many millions of dollars to Dell, but a lot. Um, and you built a brand that is really enduring.

Um you know, certainly you know one of the most prominent you know gaming brands. In the world. Um, how much of that do you attribute to to how hard you worked and your skill and intelligence and how much do you think has to do with luck. First to you, Frank.

Uh I think it has to do Mm almost entirely with the people. that were involved in all of it. That was the secret sauce of alienware was the differences in opinions And

the respect that everybody had for one another and all all of that. Was there luck? There was an enormous amount of luck. Um so many other things could have gone wrong. And a lot of things went wrong. This was not a perfect journey by any means. I mean there was an enormous amount Along the way. Um and hard work had to overcome those obstacles.

Uh but I think it's the people and it was the luck of those people coming together that were really the driving forces from my perspective. Nelson? Yeah.

Um Interesting you say about you know, you talk about uh Work. I think I If I had to give one piece of advice

To an entrepreneur. Is If you're not smarter than they are. Then I'll work them. If you have a tendency of saying, hey

I'm These people are smarter than me, my competitors, my Whatever. But you know, I'm pr I'm pretty smart too and I can outwork them. So I'm gonna work hard.

I think that's one of the biggest things that we all had in common. We worked really, really, really hard. Because we just did not have the formal training that we needed. But Beyond all things. I think that without passion we're nothing.

And I think if you take that approach as an entrepreneur and And and look at business that way. And You know, not do it just solely for the money. But

For Whatever else drives you. You know? I I think You'll be okay.

That's Nelson Gonzalez and Frank Azure. Two of the co founders Of Alienware. Frank is now an executive at AMD, a company that makes processors and a whole range of gaming devices. And a while back, both he and Nelson were appointed to the board of yet another gaming company. Gamecraft.

So for the first time in like fifteen years They're working together. Again. Before I let you go.

Nelson, you said you you you believe in in aliens, right? Oh yeah. So here's my question. If they come, if they arrive to planet Earth, are you gonna run out of your house with your arms open to the sky saying Yes! Take me! Welcome! Or are you gonna like run to the hills and and you know with your ammo and and shotgun and hide? I am not one of those believers that aliens are just uh

Entities from another galaxy to another world. If I had to leave with them, if they gave me an option, I would definitely Yeah. Give me five minutes, let me talk to my family, but I'm I'm gone. You're on that right. I'm uh yeah. Even if they

poke needles in you and and dissect you, you just it depends where they poke the needles at, yeah. But you you gotta check out that ride. You're like, you know what? I have to check out the ride. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. If you want to contact the team, our email address is hibt at id.wondery.com. And if you want to follow us on Twitter, our account is at how I built this and mine is at guyRaz. And on Instagram or at how I built this and I'm at guy.Roz. This episode was produced by Carrie Thomson with music composed by Ramteen Eraglui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Sam Paulson.

Our production staff also includes JC Howard, Casey Herman, Liz Metzger, Alex Chung, Elaine Coates, John Isabella, Chris Massini, and Carla Esteves. Our intern is Susanna Brown. I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to how I built this.

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