The Long Road to Edutainment: Tabula Digita CEO Ntiedo Etuk (Part 2)

SM: Where did you go to work after Columbia?

NE: Citigroup, which is where my H-1B [visa] was from. I worked in an R&D group they set up called the Payment Innovation Group. It was challenged to come up with $100- million profit opportunities. I did that for about a year as part of their executive rotation program. At the same time, I was thinking about the idea of Tabula. I had already gotten the commitment from the Lang Fund, which is Columbia’s incubator fund.

SM: The idea of Tabula was already in your head?

NE: Not exactly. I had created a business plan and won the Outrageous Business Plan competition based on the idea of an entertainment and education combination in the publishing space. I morphed it the day after I got the commitment from them for something that was more software- and video game- oriented and ended up not using their funds.

That was when I found my co-founder, Robert Clegg, who had the experience. He lived in the apartment next to me. We may not have started in a garage in Silicon Valley but we did start in apartments in the West Village. He had attempted to start a few different companies and was a very creative person. He had an idea of creating games that thousands of people could play at once in a stadium. He would put Pong up on a screen and the paddles were controlled by decibel levels. If one side of the stadium screamed louder the paddle would move up, and when they got quiet it moved down. Crowds could literally play a halftime game of Pong.

He had also created something called Ozzie’s World, which was an edutainment title and had been very popular in 1994. He had the experience in creating edutainment titles and was clearly a very creative person; at the same time he had also taught in the New York City public school system.

SM: He had a perfect background.

NE: That’s right. We split the responsibilities: I gave him the task of creating a set of products that would gain critical acclaim, increase achievement levels by 10%, and that we could sell. I took care of everything else, such as financing and organization infrastructure.

SM: Were you still at Citigroup at the time?

NE: I was. This was a lot of thinking that was happening. You are not allowed to work for any other organization under your H-1B. This was a lot of brainstorming. I finished the first rotation with the Payment Innovation Group and was recruited to work with the Chief of Staff to Citigroup’s president. I did that for seven months before I told them that I was going to leave to start this company I had been thinking about in my mind.

They were shocked. I was on a forward trajectory career path, so they told me that if it did not work out that I was welcome to come back. I left in April 2004.

This segment is part 2 in the series : The Long Road to Edutainment: Tabula Digita CEO Ntiedo Etuk
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