Louis Rosenberg, founder of Immersion Corp., turned down an offer of millions from Microsoft for his startup (it makes joysticks with "force-feedback" technology for video games and other applications). He appeared online to explain why he said "no" in this Business Week Enterprise chat, presented as part of America Online's Your Business Dinner series. Enterprise is a special edition of BW published seven times annually for small business and entrepreneurs. Online with Lou Rosenberg was Fred Strasser, editor of Enterprise.
Here's a sample:
Jophz: Why did you turn down Microsoft?
JackBW: That's the basic question, Louis Rosenberg. Why did you?
LouRosenb: We sort of unveiled our technology a few years ago once we had the ability to do low-cost force-feedback. Microsoft was one of the first companies interested in our technology. In one sense, we have to give them credit for seeing the potential of this technology a few years before it was ready to be launched as a consumer product.
We, as a small company, were not ready to give away our technology before the technology was realized. We knew we had to wait a few years, so people could understand how important it was to computing. Rather than selling our technology before it was ready to a single exclusive party, we decided to do nonexclusive deals with many parties -- basically keeping our options open as the technology becomes important.
