The Borrowed Computer That Built Oculus - An Unlikely Biotech Journey | Michael Antonov (Part 1/4)

Intro - 00:00:06: Welcome to The Biotech Startups Podcast by Excedr. Join us as we speak with first-time founders, serial entrepreneurs, and experienced investors about the challenges and triumphs of running a biotech startup, from pre-seed to IPO, with your host, Jon Chee. 

Jon - 00:00:30: My guest today is Michael Antonov, founder and CEO of Deep Origin. Deep Origin is helping scientists solve disease and extend healthspan by building tools that simplify R&D, simulate biology, and untangle the complexity of life. Michael is a highly accomplished serial entrepreneur and software architect. Before founding Deep Origin, he co-founded two companies that were both successfully acquired, Scaleform, which was acquired by Autodesk, and Oculus, which was acquired by Facebook. At Oculus, he led development of the PC Runtime and SDK for DK1, DK2, and the Oculus Rift. He also started the WebVR team, which shipped the Carmel browser in React VR, and contributed to Caffe2 and PyTorch as part of the Facebook AI team. Prior to that, at Scaleform, he led development of his GFX product line, a GPU-accelerated graphics, and UI toolkit used in major games across PC, console, and mobile. The software enabled seamless playback of Flash content inside game engines and became the industry standard for in-game user interfaces. In addition to his experience in software, Michael is also an investor and the founder of Formic Ventures, which makes early-stage investments in biotech Startups focused on human longevity, as well as technology startups and companies that make human lives more meaningful. With deep experience in VR, AI, and developer tools, Michael brings a unique perspective to building software for life sciences, making this a conversation you won't want to miss. Over the next four episodes, Michael shares how his experience in gaming, VR, and entrepreneurship shaped his approach to solving challenges in biotech R&D. Throughout the series, he reflects on building Oculus, navigating large organizations like Facebook, and transitioning into biotech investing and company building. He also discusses founding Deep Origin, the importance of biological simulation, and his mission to create tools that empower researchers and accelerate scientific discovery. Today, we're diving into Michael's early years growing up in Russia, his family's deep roots in biology, and the pivotal experiences that shaped his path in technology and entrepreneurship. He shares what it was like moving to the United States after the collapse of the Soviet Union, how scarcity and resourcefulness shaped his mindset, and why discovering computers at a young age changed everything. We'll also explore how programming became a creative outlet, what ultimately pulled him towards computer science instead of biology, and how early projects in high school and college laid the foundation for his future companies. Without further ado, let's dive into this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast. Michael, so good to see you again. Thanks for coming on the podcast. 

Michael - 00:02:47: Great to see you again, Jon. 

Jon - 00:02:49: So as we always, you know, like get prepared for, you know, our conversations, we always like to take it all the way back to really just figure out kind of like, what were these pivotal moments that got you inspired to pursue a business, pursue science, and honestly, just figure out kind of like how you have reached your current business philosophy and leadership style. So take us all the way back. What was it like growing up and kind of what got you into science? 

Michael - 00:03:16: Well, thank you again for inviting me. I'm excited to talk about this in the industry. I love being biotech, but to be honest, when I was young, I did not at all expect to be in technology or specifically in biotech. I was actually growing up in Russia. The very end of Soviet times, when they had what was called Perestroika, when basically Soviet Union collapsed and then there was capitalism. And I caught the last literally three years of that. I was a teenager back then and we moved to the United States in 1993. So growing up, there's like a few themes which we had. One is shortage of money. And it was fairly common because the level of life was not quite what we're used to. But also, essentially, during the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a shortage of all kinds of food and everything. Now, my parents and grandparents were very resourceful. Actually, I had a farmhouse, which I could go to and spend every summer. And then they were growing all kinds of food and vegetables so we could have those in winter. And my stepdad was working an extra job. So he was actually a biologist for everybody. 

Jon - 00:04:32: Oh, nice. 

Michael - 00:04:33: My family, remarkably, is a biologist. So it was like a turnaround circle for me to end up on this, but I completely didn't expect to be. I'll talk about that a bit more later. But my stepdad was actually working as a taxi in the evening, returning from job for a few hours to make extra money. Because often the institutes in those years, they would either pay very little, but beyond that, there literally were huge gaps and people just wouldn't get paid for months. So I grew up in a family. And if you think about Russia and the culture, I think we're kind of somewhat critical people. In many ways, it could be a little bit grim and very realistic. So I'm used to kind of that environment, which is being very analytical and focused. And practical in many ways. So that has affected me and probably shaped a lot of how I look at the world in engineering before moving to the United States. So, and after moving to United States, I went to high school in Maryland, ultimately went to University of Maryland, College Park. And it was a big transition because just the school was different, the way classes are set up. And my ultimate kind of interest, when I was young, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. But kind of early on in America, I got interested in computers and programming after seeing them a lot and kind of went into that area. So that was sort of my young years.  

Jon - 00:06:15: Interesting. And I'm trying to imagine kind of like what the dinner table talk was. Was your dad talking about biology or was there like no pressure? It's like, Michael, whatever you're interested in, you can pursue. Or was there a little bit of a nudge nudge? I know you'll eventually come back to biology. 

Michael - 00:06:33: No, I think there was no expectation or thought of that. We had, my parents would have random biological conversations. And also my dad was, you know, in neuroscience. So it's a lot of that type of conversation I could hear. But for me, I kind of just didn't relate to it so much. 

Jon - 00:06:55: Yeah, yeah. 

Michael - 00:06:57: Early on, there was this moment when I was 13 where one of a family friend brought a computer, which was at that time, it was like Spectrum was like a keyboard. You can plug into the TV and you use cassettes to load a program. And it had a few games and it had this basic interpreter. And I really liked games. It was just so fascinating. And then I could learn and write simple statements and logic. So that was like a little precursor. And then we had to return that computer because it was really temporary alone for a couple months, so I couldn't program or do anything for a while maybe until two or three years later on a calculator in high school. But I got very interested into all electronics and all technology was, something really exciting for me. And also, there was shortage of that, in the kind of old Soviet world, because like you know, I just having a cassette, would be for music was like a significant financial ownership you can have in a few. But no so like, I had a cassette player, just but just for the Walkman, and that was like a big deal. So you know any anything electronics anything computers excited me, and biology was something I would hear about, but not really pay a lot of attention to. 

Jon - 00:08:15: Yeah. I can, empathize with that experience too, because like, I think the first time you start playing games, as a kid you're just like this is amazing, like, this is actually amazing and, but for me, I kind of had an opposite kind of experience, like you know I'm going to figure out how to like program. And I was like man, I'm really bad at programming, so I was like I kind of gave that up and I was like all right I guess I'm going to go do biology. But, um, it's cool that you had an early exposure to that. And I'm going to imagine as you got to the University of Maryland, and growing up, you know, doing high school in Maryland too. You probably had, you know, exposure there's probably computers, that you were able to get your hands on, and start really getting more involved. Was that the case for you when you started getting into high school, um, and during your early university years? 

Michael - 00:09:01: Yes. That was, really, when I got to I went to high school, in Maryland. And they had these Macs, old Macs, and I think it had Oregon Trail in it, which is- 

Jon - 00:09:11: Yeah. Yeah you just died of dysentery, like.  

Michael - 00:09:15: Yes. 

Jon - 00:09:15: You're dead, yeah. 

Michael - 00:09:16: You find all these different things to do, to save your people along the way, and you say, you cross the river and somebody could just drown. 

Jon - 00:09:26: Yeah. 

Michael - 00:09:26: But, uh, that was fascinating to me, and then I started coding a little bit. There was this language and called HyperCard there, but for me, I found it, as a very creative outlet. So, like the real world, you can probably, control so little. But in that programming world, you can be as, there's like no limits. It felt like and any limit, you can sort of work through and it's very logical. That really, appealed to me, so I saw it as a very creative medium. And it's interesting, there was a, curious phrase my parents would say, and I think that probably stuck with me. Because I would look at my software things and my excitement for computers, and it would say something along the lines of, this is so trivial, like one cell, is way complicated than a spaceship. And, it is certainly true, so it stuck with me, but it had kind of like two effects. I think right now, it has stuck with me all my life, and now that I think about simulations, and I realize how true it is. But back then it had this effect of, well this computer stuff is very empowering, we can like learn and do it, in my lifetime it'll make a big difference, and I could do it. And biology will just not be solved. 

Jon - 00:10:45: Yeah, yeah. 

Michael - 00:10:45: Computers- So I think that was my logic, when I was, and- 

Jon - 00:10:49: I can definitely. Like I can put myself in your shoes, and I actually like, sometimes when you're thinking like biological problems you're like, holy crap. It's kind of this thing where you're like, the exactly what you're describing, kind of like computers being this like, we, we made computers, so it's kind of this thing where we can like understand it better but we're like in nature. We're just living in nature, and like biology is biology. And it's like this, we're just like in, I always think about it as like you're almost like in a forest with a machete, and you're just trying to cut through the forest and figure out if you're somewhere, if you're moving in the right direction oftentimes, you never know. You're just like, my gut tells me, that this is the right direction to be moving in. So, now you're you know you're you're at university, and you're you obviously, it sounds like you, you got your hand on some early organ trail and some max. Talk a little bit about your decision to pursue a degree in computer science, and kind of, what was that kind of undergraduate experience like for you. 

Michael - 00:11:49: So my learning in programming actually started in high school. So when I saw those computers, there's two things which happened. First, I did not really have a computer at home. So kind of first couple of years, we had very little money as immigrants in the States. So I would ask my parents for a computer and say, no, we don't have any money. And it would repeat every couple of weeks. But the good thing is those computers and work, I could stay at the class. I would stay after class. I think maybe school ended 2.15. I would stay till like four, an hour or two extra every day, just in a computer class. And I would just do my own thing. So I learned there for the first two years. And ultimately, my grandmother from Russia came and she gave me a few hundred dollars to literally buy a floor sample, which was like a year behind from Montgomery Ward. So I had this first computer at home. And then I had a lot less reasons to actually stay. You know. 

Jon - 00:12:51: Yeah. Cool. 

Michael - 00:12:53: But the kind of key thing which I learned, I didn't have a lot of games. So I would switch to programming my own stuff. So I learned graphics. I started writing in C. I would go to libraries and get books and maybe write notes. And I wrote my own graphics library for games. And I made games. So by the time I was in college, I've been programming in C and in assembly language. I was actually writing something called DOS Extender, which is a small operating system. And this was for about a year before getting into college. So an interesting thing when I went to college is meant a few things. First of all, I knew programming at the level that I didn't really feel I needed college. So I was probably a little bit even too optimistic about my capabilities. At the same time, I didn't know certain things one might want to know in the industry. So, for example, I did graphics that would know nothing about, say, databases, which is a common thing. Or I wouldn't know about the logic of proofs. So computer science has a real science component to it. So one example of something you learn is algorithmic complexity, like how there's like this squared or whether it's an exponential algorithm. Those kind of things make often more difference than just like the performance multiplier. But that type of stuff and proofs, I think it was hard. So I would literally have, you know, three week project, which I would do last day in like five hours. Submit. So they had to like the digital system. You can submit before 12 a.m.. So it's literally submitted like 11:50. I would get it done in like three or four hours because the program, I didn't do any. Like I basically could program whatever I wanted. But some of the more like when they told, gave me an exam and say, prove this thing. I would come up with two things. It's either too obvious. So why do I have to prove it? Prove something so dumb. Or the other side of it is if it's not too obvious, that usually is that I don't care. Like you try to make me prove something which has like, I would not actually. It is a work for it doesn't. 

Jon - 00:15:21: Yeah. Yeah.  

Michael - 00:15:23: So that was the kind of harder part of computer science. I just like to express myself into this code, but not this abstract logic.  

Jon - 00:15:32: Yeah, that's funny. And I'm going to imagine that probably because I know you started Scaleform during your, you know, your university years. Was that kind of like an outlet for you where you're like, I'm not really enjoying this abstract stuff. I just want to start like doing something like very hands on. I mean, business building and practical, like in senior work, like effectuate in practice. Is that like how did Scaleform come to be? 

Michael - 00:16:00: Well, I was making these game engines in high school. So I wanted to make my own game engine, which would be like more out there in the world. And I met actually my first business partner, Brendan, across the dorms in college. So literally we moved in and we had this funny situation where they didn't have enough dorm space for the freshmen that promised dorm space for. So I would put three people in the room instead of two. But then over about one to two months, a few people don't show up or something and they reshuffle people and they triple you. But the point is when I was at my triple, Brendan, who basically became my best friend of life for 20 years and co-founder in a couple of companies, was across a hall. So I literally would walk across his place and he was actually working in a real game company in making like coding for games. And he was very also like business, energetic, enthusiastic. So I would come to him saying, well, let's make a game engine together. And he was busy. But long story short, a year later, we reunited and actually ended up deciding to start a company together. So we started making game engine tech. And back then, like, okay, so what I really wanted was to make this really accessible, flexible 3D engine where you could do everything visually on a computer. So you could like position objects, but you can do like a little bit logic. I mean, probably the easiest you do it is this known accessible engine now called Unity. So building something like that. So this was back in a long time ago. So I wanted to make that, but also naively wanted to make a lot of things from scratch. So Brendan, like, really got excited about this idea. We're going to make a game engine. And I didn't even want to make games. Maybe I wanted to make games eventually, but it would make this game engine and a studio so others can put games together visually and quickly. And one thing is when you're young, it's very easy to underestimate how long things take. That's like you learn programming and you feel like you can figure out and you start getting this creative stream and you can work these endless hours and things work. But still, you just set a task, something simple. And then you logically in your mind, you have an idea how it should work. But actually having to do that just takes four times, eight times longer. Keep conflict, we're going to have this in a month and it takes three months. We naively, when making this game studio, decided that we wanted to make our own user interface technology for the game engine we're going to do. Because, well, at that day, we were running mostly on Windows. And Windows, you really can't make it look like anything you want for a game. You can't make it purple. You can't make it transparent or animated or any of that stuff. It's very structured. You can change a few colors. So we wanted to have a skinnable UI, which is really graphics and friendly with games. So we wanted to write our own graphics library and make our own UI. And once we make our own UI, we can use it to make a game studio in 3D. And then we'll have everything. So basically, you write everything from scratch.  

Jon - 00:19:23: Yeah.

Michael - 00:19:24: So, lets, before you make a game, why don't you first make Windows? 

Jon - 00:19:30: Yeah, that's funny.  

Michael - 00:19:32: You know, kind of maybe five or six months in actually deep work, we realized that, you know we're kind of not progressing at the pace that we'd like. But, so we had one more friend of mine join, Andrew. He was from the dorms who occasionally helped us. And we had this little office, which was an old bank with wires hearing from the ceiling. It literally was a guy from Pakistan who owned the building, like rented it to us for like $200 a month or something. It was a very shady place, honestly. Had an old vault in the back. We kind of upgraded like a year in, but we had a few computers in the corner and we would just kind of work from there for a while. So long story short, we never got to actually making a game engine. User interface system, we kind of first rewrote a whole widget library, tables, controls, scroll balls, Windows, making it skinnable, which is sort of like rewriting Windows widget set. And then we ultimately realized, and we sold it to a few games. Civilization IV was actually the first game. Sweet. Which used our UI. I don't know if you've heard of Civilization Series. 

Jon - 00:20:54: Yep. Friends, we play a lot of Civ. 

Michael - 00:20:56: It was an awesome game. 

Jon - 00:20:58: Yeah. 

Michael - 00:20:58: You build your empire and everything. And then ultimately they realized that the market didn't quite need that type of UI because a lot of games wanted animation. They wanted movement, they wanted dynamic screens, all these special effects. And Adobe Flash did that on the web. So we actually ended up re-implementing our Adobe Flash of our own with lots of tools and making the GPU accelerated at the time. So it was running like 50 times faster. So you could actually put it on top of the game. And that really picked up on what made our first company. And really the journey is about 10 to 11 years of Scaleform. So the first three to four years while, still partially in college, just programming and having no customers, then getting the first few customers, pivoting, working for a few more years. And then the last five years is where our company really ramped up. And we had about 30 to 40 employees. And we had, you know, reasonable revenue. But that was kind of our first company experience. 

Jon - 00:22:09: That's amazing. And I think what really stood out to me is like, I love how it started with the university being like, we don't have enough space. We're just going to squish everyone in here. And it just so happens that you met your co-founder just across the hall. It's kind of those moments where sometimes it's just like being in the right place at the right time, meeting the right person can really just like change the trajectory. And he said, you know, he's your best friend ever since then, which was awesome to hear. And I can also empathize with like underestimating how hard and how long things take. I think for us, right, Excedr, like when I was first starting Excedr, I was like... Lab equipment leasing. I was like, this has to be really simple. It's like, it has to be. And then fast forward, you're like, oh, wow, I've been working on this for a really long time. And there's like, if you just keep unpacking it, you're like, oh, there's like intricacies that like, I did not anticipate. And I would not have known early on either. So I can empathize with that. And so as you guys were like, you know, working in this bank, the bank with the bank fault, it sounded like, okay, you finally got, you got some product that was ready to go and like, get some of your initial customers. Can you talk about like, how did you secure your first initial customers? And what, and you mentioned that eventually you really started to get some momentum. When was that moment that you really got momentum? 

Michael - 00:23:31: So we had like the very first customer was Firaxis who made Civilization IV. It was kind of a culmination of, they wanted a really good UI. And we had this really flexible, skinnable UI. You can make it look like anything. So we sold it to them. And then we had to do a bunch of advising and consulting and actually coding. So the only code actually made specifically for a game was probably in Civilization IV, because I have actually edited some of their screens to like arrange things. But, and Brendan, the CEO did it more because the company was then was really like three of us. 

Jon - 00:24:08: Yeah. 

Michael - 00:24:09: So this CEO was doing more of the customer support and develop, but we got, the cat was kind of like a first contract. So ended up like maybe $30,000, $40,000 license for the tech and like another $150,000 of contract consulting that we got. So we got at least maybe $150,000, $200,000 of this game with us putting like five months as a team actually do it. And Brendan look at it as. It's was like, you know what, this is really not scalable. We had, and he looked at the emails, we had 140 support emails from this one product sale that we have had answer. We need to have a solution which requires less support. And that's kind of where he's decided like, maybe we should pivot to something else. And it looked like at the Adobe Flash part. So we had a couple more customers on that particular technology, but it was just like a couple of small sales, but it also took a while because you talk to people, they're like, we want animation. So, and some people would say, it would be nice to have Flash in our game. So that's when Brendan, came about to me. and was like, like, maybe we should pivot the company. And this is, you know, there's like pivot the company as a startup of the like four or five months. This is after four years of writing. 50,000 lines of C++ or maybe half a million C++. 

Jon - 00:25:35: Yeah. 

Michael - 00:25:37: So it's not like you're going to throw away so many years of your life, but we actually did. We found literally there was an open source project out there. It was called GameSwift. And it was like a very small library. I think it was used for like one game and a guy posted online. And we picked it up and just started making it really good and improving it. And we posted it. I think Brendan already had a few connections with a company called Crytek. Made a game called Crysis. It was a very big... First-person shooter, phenomenal graphics. I was trying to get them to use our animated UIs, which they ultimately agreed. And the agreement was that we give up the technology for free, and we'll provide limited pass, limited support. But if they like it, they will say good stuff to the media. So we did that. And actually, they did make a few press releases, and as a game started coming about, this is like a major studio who adopted us, other people were willing to listen. So there was this one. So you fast forward a few more months and our tech was very useful. It was nice for animating, but it had lots of problems to be afraid at that point. It took us many months to make the Flash player good. Many years it is. But the- there was this one moment. Where there is a company called BioWare and make a lot of really good games. And at some point they called up because they saw an announcement about Crysis and they wanted Flash in the game. They talked to Brendan and he comes in and he talks to them. So you guys might want to use it. They're like, yeah, we'll get like, so he's like, do you want to get one license or maybe for a couple games you want to try it? And they were like, we will get it for 10 games. And that was like a moment where suddenly had a business. So it's basically because 10 games, I think might be like a few hundred thousand like for like maybe. Three to 400,000 or two to three, depending on what capabilities they want. Like we charged per platform. Like if you have Xbox and PlayStation and PC, it's like three platforms versus just one. But that was like the moment where suddenly it clicked. So we can actually build a company there. And it went, so we suddenly started ramping up. So in that year, we made a million dollars in sales. And next year was like a million. But that's, I think was probably six year or fifth year in the company's existence. 

Jon - 00:28:16: That's crazy. That's awesome. And I love that strategy, you know, of like just being like, we're going to do that. Well, I don't know. I would imagine, I don't know how much it was a negotiation or it was just like, you're going to take it or leave it. But just like. You're going to give it to us for free. And then we will be a reference for you. So I don't know how much of a negotiation that was, but still, I think there's something there that's really fascinating is how impactful it can be to get that. That big logo to basically vouch for the product. And I can't imagine Bioware's doors would be open if you hadn't gotten the Crysis kind of like stamp of approval. I remember trying to run Crysis on my PC and my PC would just overheat. And the frames would just drop. Because I was like, I didn't have the latest like NVIDIA graphics card. I was like, God, like my computer can't even run this thing. It's like about to blow up. So like, you know, the, the, like, you know, I always remembered Crysis being this kind of like known for having, it's like kind of looking really great and awesome. It was still three of you at that time when, when you got the BioWare deal 

Michael - 00:29:31: No, by BioWare, there were probably like 8 or 10 people. So we had a family investor, which is Brendan's uncle, and he's dripped us like... About a million and a half over like five years. So there's like times where we didn't have money at all and times where we did, but like it literally was very intermittent. So I think once we got Crysis and once we had the first Civilization customer. He gave us a bit more money, incrementally from the first few hundred K. But, we were kind of struggling, but but Brendan, was basically connect- collecting small checks, from friends, family, and fools. 

Jon - 00:30:12: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know the exact, uh, the exact dance. But that's amazing to hear, and like, what a, awesome experience, to you know, I think you learn a lot, even though it's like really hard shit. Like it's really hard, we just learn so much through that experience, and when you talked about like kind of landing, you know, with these big, you know these game makers. Like was this where, you like you and Brendan, are like knocking on studios doors? Or is something where you like, is it like did they find you? Like how did, like how did that connection, like how did BioWare, get connected or did you guys go hunt them down? 

Michael - 00:30:49: So, we would go to Game Developers Conference every year. 

Jon - 00:30:53: Got it. 

Michael - 00:30:54: And Brendan would reach out to all kind of speaking game people and would present. And we'd have a dog and pony show with a laptop. Here's our UI. Here's what you want. How do you use it in your game? So there's been a number of years of that. 

Jon - 00:31:09: Yeah. 

Michael - 00:31:09: So I would say it was a lot of his effort. I participated. I answered questions. I did not do it. I was just programming. But, occasionally, I'd like to talk to the customer. I mean, later I talked to the customer, but more in the format of support and working with them too. So I think in this case, I'm not sure, because we were also pressed in some connections. So they could have reached out. But in practice, I would say a lot of it. Big fraction was deals. And ultimately, we got a couple of people also doing sales full time after that deal. But in the beginning, it was just, I think, Brendan and us. 

Jon - 00:31:49: Cool. And, I think I'm a big gamer. So, so like I can like hearing these, these kind of like household names is kind of crazy. But also in the side- Like it kind of works the same way in science, like everyone just goes to a scientific conference and like you can kind of make these connections, which can make huge impacts like this. So that's awesome to hear. And, you know, as you know, I know you eventually there was an acquisition by Autodesk. Can you talk a little bit about. When did you know it was time to sell the company? And how did that, like, what was the lead up to that? And what was that experience like? 

Michael - 00:32:24: So it took, like, we were scaling for a while. I think we, it was a couple of years we were doubling. We had like a million revenue, then we had two million a year, then we had four. And then it was this year we were about to get six. Which was the last year. And I think there was like a Crysis 2008, which happened in between. And we kind of had to let some people go, but it really wasn't because of the Crysis more than internal overhiring and mismanagement. But we kind of trimmed some managers and other things we did and just focused on engineering. But that kind of went well for us. But then there was a point where it was like the slowing down and we realized, okay, now there's a lot of people who use it and the market size are limited. We got to do something more. And I think Brendan, and we try to also occasionally talk to VC. We got at some point a couple of term sheets, but they just were not good terms. So we just chose not to get it and grow organically. And there was a point where Brendan, probably more than me, thought that there's like a limit on how much we can grow this. And, oh, we need to do something more significant. So, and there was Autodesk at the time. So they have all the kind of top CAD. They have Maya. And I think that they also acquired another. They had a couple of top CAD packages and they wanted to be in games. And they were concerned that Unreal Engine, which I'm building internal tools, would ultimately eat their lunch. So they wanted to have game tools. And they've already acquired a couple of things. It was like a physics technology and something else that they've acquired. And so they were looking at the space. And ours, at that point, was starting to become the top user interface solution in the game industry. So there's probably hundreds of games that used us. It was basically you pick up Scaleform for UI. You pick up Havok for physics. You pick up what else was like. At that time, I think it was like Miles or some Bink for video. Now it's probably something else. But there's a few top games everybody went to. So we kind of made that list, I would say, in the end of if you make a game and you want nice UI, this is where you go. And so basically, Brendan talked to the leaders there and convinced them that if you want to grow and you want to have like a really great middleware suite, you might want to, we might be able to join forces and do it together. And that's kind of how it happened. And honestly, a negotiation for that took like six months. So there was like a moment where like, okay, we're probably going to do it. And after that. It kind of dragged on. So much so that I was able to move to a neighboring state when I knew that we're going to exit. So I can move to Virginia from Maryland. The funny part about that, but it ultimately closed. And we felt like we would be the biggest middleware in the group and they could invest and do that. And sadly, they did not invest in us as much as was promised. That's how it often happens in those things. 

Jon - 00:35:48: Yeah. And so after the acquisition, you guys basically stayed on for a little bit of time. 

Michael - 00:35:53: Yes. So like we planned, we weren't actually tied up because the technology was working and mature. So it was small, all cash deal. But ultimately, Brendan said, we're going to work with them. We're going to do everything. But then three months later, he got an offer from another startup. It was like, Mike, I'm heading out. I was running all of Scaleform and stayed for about a year. 

Jon - 00:36:20: Yep, totally. And so after that year, and Mike has now joined the startup. Did you know what was on the horizon? Like what was up next for you? Or at that point where you're like, I got to figure this out. 

Michael - 00:36:35: So the... Autodesk, they're a big company. I think they meant well, and I really like the game industry. But there's something about corporate structures. Once they acquired us... We were hoping for more resources and funding and marketing, but it didn't happen. Literally, we might have hired like one more engineer. So, and whatever revenue we're getting was kind of just over breakeven as a company. So we kind of supported the team on our own. So we had all these plans, but we kind of just kept operating as we have. But with more of these long fall conversations with my manager and discussions about the team and direction. I think I just remember being like. And the team which acquired us was in Montreal. So I would fly there occasionally. Mostly it would just be on a phone call. And I just felt these moments where it was even before Zoom. So it was just very cool. Kind of like, why am I on this call type of sensation. But end of the day, they kind of kept it going and the team, but they didn't give us resources to actually grow. And they've actually cut the marketing because marketing was now as a part of their suite. So we used to have our own booth and our own presence and things. And that didn't really, that got cut down. So then they were surprised that there was no growth in business beyond that position point. It was kind of just flat. I think we did one big deal with Nintendo or something, but that was it. I think that was probably one good thing about Autodesk since our technology was so mature at that point. And the graphics engine is so good. That's probably some of the best code I wrote in my life the last two years before that was this vector graphics library. So the Nintendo, which is very hard to actually get to Nintendo to use that company to use middleware. And I think we got a big deal with it, which was like $1 or $2 million or something on a lot, which was like a big win. But otherwise, it was. Kind of blah. 

Jon - 00:38:46: Yeah. Totally. I, I was just like. with especially with like you know, all the news that's coming out with like the Switch 2, and everything that's like, and how much they control, like Nintendo like loves their control. That is impressive as hell, that you got them to, to kind of incorporate what your creation. So that's like amazing, and I'm going to imagine like you you went from, Scaleform your baby, kind of you and your best friends. And then go into a large organization. There was probably it's just like, kind of a culture shock, I'm going to imagine. It's just like, small organization, with a lot of control big organization. Maybe with far less control, and but, you still land a Nintendo which is awesome. 

Michael - 00:39:24: Yeah, I mean, they wanted us to go, so they supported like a big goal. But it was very hard to get any kind of headcount. So you have to basically convince now a number of... Managers and teams about the future of your own thing. So you had to play this remote political thing. And that's just not me. 

Jon - 00:39:42: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, you realize that, okay, this is not me. This is not my cup of tea. Did you know what was next? Were you like, maybe I'm going to go join Brendan at this startup? 

Michael - 00:39:53: Well, I stayed for like a while because I also really cared about the team or things I wanted to finish. They wanted to like things I wanted to do. But in the end of the day, I think Brendan called me up. I was like, we really have been doing this great thing at this company called Gaikai, which is a cloud game streaming thing. Do you want to come join in? We could use a software architect. And I was considering it. And then a few more months passed by. And I think just around the year of our acquisition, I was like, okay, it's enough. I'm going to go join and try to do something else. 

Outro - 00:40:29: Thanks for listening to this episode of The Biotech Startups Podcast with Michael Antonov. In part two, we'll explore Michael's journey building Scaleform, the early challenges of scaling a startup, and how a chance meeting in college led to a co-founder partnership that would span decades. He also shares how Scaleform pivoted into an industry standard, what it was like navigating acquisition talks with Autodesk, and the early lessons that set the stage for founding Oculus. If you're enjoying the episode, follow the show, leave us a review and share it with a friend. See you next time. The Biotech Startups Podcast is produced by Excedr. Don't want to miss an episode? Search for The Biotech Startups Podcast wherever you get your podcasts and click subscribe. Excedr provides research labs with equipment leases on founder-friendly terms to support paths to exceptional outcomes. To learn more, visit our website, www.excedr.com. On behalf of the team here at Excedr, thanks for listening. The Biotech Startups Podcast provides general insights into the life science sector through the experiences of its guests. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from the podcast is at the user's own risk. The views expressed by the participants are their own and are not the views of Excedr or sponsors. No reference to any product, service or company in the podcast is an endorsement by Excedr or its guests.