YouSaid · the spoken record

Frank Azor

lines on the record: 96
first: 2022-12-12
most recent: 2022-12-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“But you couldn't order it Yeah, and Alex would be the sales guy. So Alex would answer the phone and take the order and all that good stuff. And we did okay. We did like, I don't know, 50 machines that month, whatever.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He loved the machine. He called it an 800-pound gorilla and he says, I'm not going to give it back to them. There's no way. I love this machine because the guy's a gamer himself And we had the ad, and then we got a couple orders, and then we noticed I already started using a little proficient with the web stuff. We noticed that there was some traffic. But back then, all we did was you could configure the machine online, but you couldn't order it.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, man. It was a tough, you know, it was a tough proposition, but only those that could appreciate it appreciated it. Because they knew the power of this PC once they loaded up their favorite game. I mean, we would give them a range of things like, okay, you can only pick from these three motherboards. You can only pick, you know, and let's say from these two manufacturers in terms of memory. But they had the ability to create themselves your own machine.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I was looking, I just was before this interview, I was just looking at prices for an iMac at that time. Because you're talking about five, six, seven thousand dollars for what you were building. Yeah. An IMAC was $1,299.98 PCs, desktop PCs at that time were like $500.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Custom hot rod. It's a custom hot rod. That's what you were doing. Oh, yeah. That's what it was. And these chop shops exist, right? You can get a custom hot rod today. Exactly. And Ford and Chrysler and”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was such a complicated machine. It had one two D card Two 3D cards, 3DFX Voodoo cards and sly It had two sound cards. It had two hard drives and SCUSI, well, it had a raid controller for the hard drives and TAN to make them faster. Memory up the gazoon. By the way, that mission cost us money. That was a big investment.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I told him we were, you know, I'm not a gambler, but I definitely gambled on that one. We gambled on that one because between the machine, the rent, the advertisement, I mean, we were clearly way beyond the remains already.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a lot of money. They also gave us net terms, I think. I go, oh, wow, okay, good, cool. In net terms, let me put a credit card on this or whatever. You know, I don't know. It was.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, so we send the machine. The machine was like the most glorious piece of machinery. And hey, yeah, we're going to do an advertisement. The advertisement back then for a full page was $5,000.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I think you get a pretty good review in this one magazine, in Boot Magazine. But I guess it's kind of a small publication, right? So from what I gather, you decide to send another computer to another magazine, to PC Gamer, which is bigger. And I guess this time you also take an ad out, right? Like in the same magazine?”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, yes. They were there. We were there, you know? And then there was the software developers that were introducing the world to 3D gaming. And I just felt that, wow, man, this is so exciting. You know, honestly, I didn't even care about making money. The overriding factor for me was more so, wow, you know, this is so cool. This is absolutely so cool. There's going to be, you know, maybe I'll have a customer or two out there, maybe in Oregon or in Washington State or New York or somewhere, you know, playing on one of my computers, a video game that that person's going to love. You know, what greater joy is that, you know?”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But they were So, this was a completely under the radar thing, and yet there was this culture, subculture of magazines and gamers who were basically getting them built. Built by their friends or these mom and pop sh”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The consumer PC back then was probably Gateway Micron Compaq, but they weren't optimized for they were doing big volumes and whatnot.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Listen, I was stunned. I called Boot magazine. I don't know who I spoke to. And I said, Well, I got this company, I've got this machine, and I want you guys to check it out. It's a game. Oh, it's a gaming computer. And I think that's what got them interested.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes Listen, it was credit card debt. We didn't have any cash. When I say, hey, Al, you need to bring $5,000. Yeah, you don't have any cash. So I call Alex. I tell him this is the proposition. And he goes, dude, I'm there tomorrow. Oh, okay. Let's do it.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But he went Alex and myself say yes at the same time, it's dangerous because it really does mean it's going to be okay. I go, but here's the thing, Alex. You're going to need to drop your job. You're going to need to leave your job. And you're going to have to bring, like, I don't know, $5,000. I don't know if it was $5,000 or $6,000 because I would put the other $6,000 in.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so it's already like 1990 late 97 early 98, I guess. And then, so I call Alex, and I say Al. And he picks up the phone. Hey, what's up? Listen, I got this name for a company. And we're going to do the same thing, but we're going to use the model that we have for creative gaming designs. And let's just sell mail order computers. I saw this company called Falcon Do It and they're in computer gaming world or PC Gaming. Why can't we do it? So he goes, Yeah, what are you going to call it? I go, How about alienware? He goes, wow, that's a pretty cool name. You know, and Alex and myself are pretty realistic. If he would have said, nah, I would have kind of like listened to that. I would have taken it seriously.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so is Alex. Alex is a big UFO enthusiast even to this day. I also knew, I kind of knew that I wanted my, like, the company name to start with an A, because that way we would be first in the yellow pages.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, well, the ad was it was strange, I gotta tell you, it was strange because I said. I said, I've got appeal to the nerds like me and Alex and all our friends. So the first ad we did was that of a weird looking alien, okay, hovering over a PC with all the configuration of what parts we were going to use and the sum total. But I want to go a little bit, if you don't mind, I'll tell you the funny story about how alien work came to be I'm a big UFO guy. I'm a big UFO enthusiast. I've always been. Are they real?”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By Falcon Northwest. We became very familiar with them. They became one of our competitors. But I also saw them advertising on one of the magazines. I think it was Computer Gaming World or Piece of Gamer back then. So at this point, I'm saying, man, you know, we did the creative gaming designs, which was Pro Wrestler, and we did it through mail order. Wait a second, why don't we just, you know, put a little ad somewhere in a magazine like these guys do and sell our services of putting PCs together.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then I kind of ignored it. And then I'm looking at Fabian, I'm punching myself and I'm saying, man, there's got to be a better way. So I said, I. And I got to tell you, there was already a company around that was doing this already back in the day.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know, I think I gotta admit something. I'm not that bright. You are very bright. No, no. But anyway, keep working. You know, I kind of ignored the whole thing”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because you were selling the PCs, but then you were the tech support too, which you probably didn't realize. Absolutely. It was They were calling it like, Nelson, my computer's down. What's going on? You're like, oh, you're like building this other PC. Now you got to stop and help troubleshoot that thing for that person.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, zero dollars. If anything, we probably lost money. The support, it's, I mean, routinely, I would have to go to people's offices because what's the other problem here? The other problem is guess what? The internet was very new. The programs, they didn't know how to use them correctly. They didn't know how to configure a network, so therefore they had no idea what a network is and how it works. So there was a lot of troubleshooting. And I found myself going to a lot of these places and say, man, this is not worth it. This is not the...”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. But back then, especially the computer chassis were, man, they were not built with quality, okay? And they were like, you know, they were cheap. And what happened was I would cut myself. I mean, it was like, I was fighting a demon every time I went into a computer.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I felt that there needed to be compatibility amongst peripherals. And I kind of identified what those were for gaming so that they worked well in a gaming environment because, believe it or not, I mean, again, it's supposed to work together. It's Windows-based. All the drivers are supposed to work together. That was not the case. So I tried to make a system where it was dependable and it was fast.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we tried, you know, we had a couple friends that did have HPs and whatnot, and it didn't work right. It was very cumbersome. I mean, you had the video card was very important. It's always been very important, right? The video card and the motherboard and whatnot. I felt that there was more quality with the motherboards and the memory and all the components that I was picking. And even though people would say, oh, it's supposed to work together and, you know, whatever, it didn't exactly work that way.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they said, hey, I want a computer that can do, like, what was the difference between just for people to know, like a gaming PC in 1995 or 96, what was the difference between that and just a regular PC build?”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He's the computer. He's the guy. He's the guy. So, What was interesting was hey, can you build me a PC for gaming? Can we optimize it for, yeah, why not? So I built. A couple machines one was for Alex's. Father-in-law. We built it for him and we built one for Hector.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was me. It was me. It was myself and another gentleman. That started with me. Actually, he would be the first one to start aiding with, which was his name is Fabian Santi Esteva. And he works with Alex and Hector and all my friends. So Fabian is part of our group already. So, Fabian goes around town, and when we get orders from different, you know, again, these were small businesses that were in need of a PC with a printer and blah, blah, blah, you know. So we build a custom machine for them and I'd set up the whole thing. I did the whole network for them. And Fabian would go around and source the components that we needed to put these PCs together.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On the side, so I ask Alex. Alex, I need a name for the company. So Alex is a big collector of World War I, World War II, Korean War Aces. So there was this famous Japanese ace. He was shot, and it spoke to perseverance. The guy was a heroic fighter pilot. So we decided to name the company Sakai.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Be Sakai. Okay. And I'm just going to, from what I understand, this was a company which was like that Iranian friend Do something similar. You would build custom to custom build PCs. Tell me about deciding to leave that job at the post-production house and starting your own business.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I got this job managing this network. What do you think? He goes, Nelson, you have no idea what you're doing. How the hell did you get this job? I go, I don't know, but you know what? I'm going to do it. So he goes, you're nuts. I go, yeah, but something drove me to this. I don't know what it was, but something was driving me. I didn't lie. I really didn't lie in the interview, but I wasn't very truthful either because I didn't have the experience I, you know, they thought I had. Anyway, I got the job. I learned a lot. It taught me a lot about the components inside the PC. If you're going to have a PC network.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, at that time, I felt I needed more computing experience. So I interviewed for this job, and my friends go, you're crazy. You know, again, here comes the confidence part. I interviewed for this job to be an IT support guy or to manage a network, a small network for a post-production house. So I got the job. I don't know how I got the job because really I was a novice at computing. I had no formal education. I really not qualified for this. But I always felt that if given the opportunity listen, I'll learn it and nobody's going to outwork me. There's no way. So I can do this. Sure enough, I got the job. I call Alex. I says, hey, Al, you know, I got.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, 300 copies of this is not going to buy a house in Miami and support a family. And that's the reality of it. Alex was at that time probably doing, if I'm not mistaken, I think he was doing neurological diagnostic testing of some sort. And he was a technician. Know he was doing that. I was already doing something else.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, yes, and it was a beer and pretzels game. It was a, in fact, we could play it today and have, I guarantee you, you got a group of people together.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, Alex had this idea for coming out with a board game. And the subject matter was pro wrestling. You develop your character and you roll the dice and basically you have certain moves and you put the move on the other guy. It's a tactical game. Yeah. And I kind of was like an artist. I used to draw a lot. So he had me do the characters that we thought were really cool.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, absolutely. The game that really got me going, the first time I saw it was Doom. You know, your space marine in a Mars base, you're going through corridors, and all of a sudden you got these hellacious monsters coming out from the seventh level of hell or whatever. And you're shooting them up with a traditional gun and whatnot. It was silly, but it wasn't silly. So for us, this world was perfectly acceptable, you know?”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'll tell you what, it was not easy. And the other part of it is, you know, configuring the machine so I could work with games back then was. You know, an art form unto itself.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know, I wonder at this time, 1990, you could buy obviously a compact or a variety, any number of dozens of these clones, no name brand off the shelf. PCs. Why did you want it made for you at that time?”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was one of our friends, Joe Pontillo, and he was the one, the first one that had a 386, I believe. And this was probably, gosh, 1990. That's when we were exposed to the PC for gaming because we saw a couple of video games loaded up for the first time. At that point, I made friends with a gentleman, an Iranian gentleman that had one of those small mom and pop operations. And I started hanging out there. And I start learning more and more. So I had him build a PC. And as I told him, wow, listen, you're going to build his PC, but I want to see how you build it, if you don't mind. He goes, no, absolutely.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, they would, you know, oh, I want to be in. Oh, sure. I want to be president of the United States. Oh, come on. That's easy type of thing. So it's like a natural confidence that they would give you. So I always had that mentality of, you know what, I am going to get out of this.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was very frustrated because even though we were lower middle class and now I was, I would say lower class because it was my mom and myself and she needed help even with welfare. And I myself was just working in these stupid jobs that really didn't go anywhere. And I was like, wow, is this life? This is going to be all that I can look forward to. So, you know, I kept my head up and I always aspired, I always had the confidence. And I think that my parents, especially my mom, gave me that confidence that I could do whatever I want. And it wasn't. It was never something that, oh, you can't do this if you don't want to do this. So I always had that mentality and I think it's very generic amongst Cuban Americans. In Miami. I don't know what it is, our parents' generation, how”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was and still is the gateway to the Latin American marketplace, and it meant that the city had warehouses filled with all kinds of computer components designated for export to South America. So at the beginning, Nelson had quick access to things like motherboards and computer cases and peripherals, the stuff you need to build a PC. He called his little business alienware, in part because, well, he's fascinated by aliens. At the beginning, not a single bank would loan money to Nelson to get the business going, so most orders required you to pay up front. That small cash flow fueled a business that eventually became one of the leading gaming PC companies in the US. And the story of how Nelson did it with a small group of friends, mostly Cuban Americans, most of them broke, none of them with college degrees.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're trying to run a business. You have to buy parts. You have to pay rent. You have to pay services. And yeah, they would hold the money for however long they wanted to hold it for because they thought the business wasn't legitimate.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the things that made life really interesting for us was we were a small company in Miami. Taking orders basically over the internet using credit cards. But the banks that we dealt with were all freaking out. What is this company doing? They're in Miami.”
2022-12-12 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT