Alienware: Frank Azor and Nelson Gonzalez

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 12 December 2022

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With no formal training in business or computer design, Nelson Gonzalez and his cofounders decided to do what almost no other company was doing in the mid-1990’s: make personal computers specifically for gaming. They started as a tiny custom shop in Miami, and eventually began building PC’s for avid gamers, who were willing to pay top dollar for higher speed, better graphics, and a brightly-colored chassis that looked like the head of an Alien. Despite ongoing challenges with sourcing parts and getting loans, Alienware became one of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. In 2006, it was purchased by Dell for an undisclosed amount, and remains one of the most popular gaming PC’s in the country.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:09.0	When you leave home, can you ever really go back?
0:12.0	Made a version!
0:13.0	Soccer legend Leo Messi and I both left Argentina as kids.
0:17.0	You know you're that piece of a puzzle that doesn't fit anywhere.
0:20.0	To so many immigrants, football is a way to reconnect.
0:23.0	Listen to the last cop in the embedded podcast feed
0:26.0	to hear the latest collaboration from MPR and Fuduro Studios.
0:31.0	One of the things that made life really interesting for us was
0:36.0	we were a small company in Miami taking orders basically over the internet using credit cards
0:44.0	but the banks that we dealt with were all freaking out.
0:49.0	What is this company doing? They're in Miami.
0:52.0	Say that you were in something unsavory.
0:55.0	Yes.
0:56.0	We're trying to run a business.
0:58.0	You have to buy parks, you have to pay rent, you have to pay services.
1:03.0	And yeah, they would hold the money for however long they wanted to hold it for.
1:07.0	They thought this was a legitimate.
1:11.0	Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs,
1:21.0	idealists and the stories behind the movements they built.
1:28.0	I'm Guy Ross and on the show today, how two guys from Miami with no formal education
	...

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