Selftaught tech whiz runs augmented reality firm
Jeri Ellsworth began playing pinball when she worked in a bowling alley as a teenager, and a manager there would occasionally give her a few free credits. Today, she has a collection of more than 70 pinball machines, but her passion has moved from the mechanical into a new digital augmented reality, which she believes will be the future of entertainment.
Ellsworth, 45, is a selftaught computer hacker and chip designer who recently started an augmented reality gaming company, Tilt Five, in San Jose. She is emblematic of a generation of Silicon Valley hobbyists who were passionate about computers and only later turned their passions into commercial enterprises. She originally gained visibility as an independent chip designer living in a rural ramshackle farmhouse in Yamhill, Ore.
Ellsworth was able to squeeze the entire circuitry of a decadesold Commodore 64 home computer onto a single advanced silicon chip, which she then tucked neatly into a joystick that was connected by a cable to a TV set. Called the Commodore C64 DirecttoTV, her device was able to run 30 video games, mostly sports, racing and puzzle games from the early 1980s, all without the hassle of changing game cartridges.
She was later hired by gaming company Valve Software to lead its research effort in augmented reality, which uses special glasses or holographic displays to superimpose threedimensional objects and text on the physical world.
In 2013, she created Palo Alto startup castAR, an augmented reality company that planned to design a system to support desktop 3D gaming. Ultimately, the company raised more than $1 million in a Kickstarter campaign, then gave the money back when it was unable to raise a second round of
financing. With other cast AR employees, Ellsworth acquired the original technology from investors and has used it to start Tilt Five, which has raised $1.3 million on Kickstarter.
The following conversation has been edited and condensed.
Q: What would you like people to know about your work? A: I’ve always been passionate about making complete user experiences, whether for a kid’s toy for a 12yearold or something more professional, making sure it’s got the complete package, that it’s really easy to use on the physical side. It’s got all the software and the interactions, and that’s what I really get passionate about. And hopefully, people will remember that in my various things I’ve done.
Q: What inspired you to go into your field?
A: I don’t know if there’s one single person. I think an awesome role model for me was my father, who was a really hard worker when I was a kid. And I saw him struggle to do his own business. So I think that’s why I always lean toward doing my own thing instead of going and working for a monolithic company. But along the way, there’s been lots of mentors. Getting to know, first from a distance, people like Steve Wozniak or Nolan Bushnell, whom I later met in person, or all these kind of famous early Silicon Valley folks. I’d like to be like them, making these amazing products. So from afar, they inspired me, but to actually meet them later in life was really cool.
Q: When you were growing up, what did you want to be?
A: I wanted to be an astronaut. Yeah. I was really into space as a kid. At one point, I wanted to be a pilot and actually considered going into the Navy or the Air Force. And my father talked me out of that. I was actually talking to recruiters and telling them, “I want to fly.” And my dad said, “you know what, they’re going to figure out that you’re really good with radios and computers and communications, and they’re going to stick you in the bottom of a ship running radios.” And so yeah, who knows how it would have happened, but I veered off from that.
Q: What obstacles have you faced in your field?
A: There are lots of obstacles in Silicon Valley, especially for a female entrepreneur. The money that female entrepreneurs can raise is dismal compared to men. It’s like 2%. It rewards the kind of male bravado where you go in and get a fist bump and get a bunch of money. That’s how it feels. There’s been some really disheartening surveys recently. They followed 300 women and 300 men, and then they determined, what questions do venture capitalists ask men versus women and men get asked, “Tell me all about the upside,” while women are asked, “Tell me how you’re going to defend yourself from the marauders.” And so that’s been a bit of a challenge.
Q: How does technology interact with your profession?
A: I have to stay up with it, and I try to always be as much on the leading edge of technology as possible. I have optics tables at home and I have plasma etchers. I even have holographic world combiners. I try to be fearless when it comes to technology, and I try to adopt it as fast as possible.