20-Year Journey of a Fat Startup with Major Pivots: Scott Sellers, CEO of Azul (Part 1)

VCs invest in startups that go from zero to $100M in 5 to 7 years. It has taken Azul almost 20 years to make that journey. Scott discusses the pivots and strategic shifts that have made the journey possible. With patience and persistence, and with an excellent two-pronged Open Source strategy, Scott has built Azul into a compelling business with many exit options from IPO to various acquisition paths.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the very beginning of your story. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Scott Sellers: I am from Colorado. I became enamored with technology at a very early age. The superintendent of our school was pretty innovative. In second grade, they purchased a bunch of the original personal computers, which was something called the TRS-80 from The Radio Shack. It was truly the first thing that you could put on a desk and start to program.

I cut my chops in terms of programming using the Basic programming language of the TRS-80 which then led me to buy every Apple product. Through high school in Colorado, I did a lot of math and computer science.

I went to Princeton. I graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering. I fell in love with technology. All along, I had always wanted to come to Silicon Valley. I had a fascination with technology startups and entrepreneurship. That had always been my intent.

I was blessed to receive an offer from Silicon Graphics (SGI) coming out of school. Everything from the sheer engineering talent to the culture was just fantastic. That was where I began my professional career.

Sramana Mitra: How long did you stay at SGI?

Scott Sellers: For about four years. I worked in the group that was responsible for putting SGI workstations on every desk. I built three generations of products while I was there.

Sramana Mitra: We were using your product. I was in EECS at MIT for grad school. We were using some of your SGI workstations for my class.

Scott Sellers: Fantastic.

Sramana Mitra: What happens after SGI? That puts us right at the point when the commercial internet is getting interesting.

Scott Sellers: From my world, we were focused on what 3D graphics could bring to consumers and professional animators. At that time, SGI was becoming very well-known for being the engine to a lot of CGI. Jurassic Park and movies like that put SGI on the map in terms of what was possible to do. It had never been done before by computers.

Back in the Star Wars days, there were very impressive imageries, but that was all done with models and cameras. SGI was the first that had the computational horsepower and the 3D imaging technology to be able to do it now on computers. That was a wonderful environment working there to be exposed to that kind of technology.

Working in this workstation division at SGI, we had a desire to continue to bring this to a much more consumable price point. A couple of the members of the management team left to start a company. The idea there was to create 2D/3D graphic boards for PCs. I left to work for that company. It was acquired later. Right around acquisition, we were continuing to think about the next wave of 3D. You have 3D show up in a lot of consumer devices. For example, the Sony Playstation.

It showed that there was a lot of demand in the gaming community. I started a company along with two others called 3dfx back in 1995. The idea there was to lead the revolution for 3D graphics for consumers. 3dfx was one of the first to lead that major shift.

This segment is part 1 in the series : 20-Year Journey of a Fat Startup with Major Pivots: Scott Sellers, CEO of Azul
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