ing the Smart Grid. “At a point, I was wondering, ‘Am I being stupid here?’” he says. “But then the patents were issued, and Duke stepped in. The entrepreneurial lows can be really far down there, but the highs can be really high. “A definition of an entrepreneur is someone who has a great idea, tells it to 100 people and, when they all say it’s a dumb idea, looks at him or herself in the mirror firmly convinced that they are all wrong.” Flohr adds, “You need to believe in yourself big time. A big ego certainly doesn’t hurt.” Nathaniel McClure, the consumer video-game producer, was certainly riding high in the video-game world on the Call of Duty franchise at Activision, working his way up over six years from being an entry-level tester to becoming producer of Call of Duty 4. His team had gelled, shipping 14 versions of the top-selling game over 10 months. But it came at a cost. He was sleeping in his office several nights a week. At 3 o’clock one morning, he’d had enough. “There I was, at one of the world’s top video-game franchises, and I was killing myself,” says McClure, who lives in Farmington Hills, MI, with his wife, Andrea Anderson ’00, and their three children. “At that second I knew it was time to leave and start my own company.” His company’s first game, Real Heroes Firefighter, took the first-person shooter concept from Call of Duty and transformed it into a nonviolent game, in which the firefighter is “shooting” with his fire hose to extinguish a fire and using his ax to save people. Other games he has developed include Rock of the Dead, in which the player kills zombies and aliens with guitars
and drums, and Man v. Wild, which is based on the Discovery Channel show. But McClure’s success has come with his share of adversity. He moved his company to Michigan to take advantage of the state’s generous subsidy program for film and entertainment enterprises, which provided a 40 percent rebate for corporate spending in such businesses. The state, however, denied his application for the funds. He sued and won his case against Michigan, which granted him the subsidy. But the state has since appealed that decision. “It has been a frustrating couple of years,” he says. “But we’re doing all right. And that’s a perfect example of how I fell flat on my face. Or maybe it was more like getting hit in the head with a two-by-four.”
ENTREPRENEURS BET ON THEMSELVES Some entrepreneurs, such as graphic designer Herman, set sail direct from college. Others, such as Warren Katz ’93, president of Global Scenic Services, and Mark DiMassimo ’86, CEO and chief creative officer at DIGO Brands, worked for well-established firms before launching their own companies. DiMassimo worked in top public relations firms such as J. Walter Thompson, BBDO, and Kirshenbaum & Bond before he started his firm in 1996. Over the ensuing 15 years, DiMassimo says he has prospered, and has developed his company with dedication to constant improvement, resilience, and optimism. “It helps Mark DiMassimo to be a little unrealistic in the beginning,” says DiMassimo, who lives with his wife, Jill, and three boys in Rye, NY. “You have to be able to fall in love with ideas so totally, so they look easier to do than they really are.”
Nathaniel McClure
In one of Scientifically Proven Entertainment’s first video games, Rock of the Dead, the player kills zombies and aliens with guitars and drums.
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