Where did you grow up and how would you describe yourself as a child?

I grew up in a small town in upstate New York. When I was little, looking back, I’d describe myself as adventurous, outgoing, and competitive – growing up it was all sports all the time! 

What do you enjoy doing in your free time?

I’m still active in competitive sports and use competition as a healthy way to manage stress. I’ve played volleyball since I was in college and have only taken one year off – in 2020, during the height of the pandemic. These days I also incorporate board games into the roster as well.

What did you study in college and what was your first job out of school?

I decided to get my bachelor’s degree in physics and math at a liberal arts college in New York. I thought a liberal arts college would be more well-rounded and that I’d have a clearer picture of different career paths than if I went somewhere for a specialized degree. After I completed my undergrad studies, I knew I wanted to continue my education and decided to focus on engineering. I went to Boston University and graduated with my master’s degree in electrical engineering. It was a lot of school, but I didn’t mind putting off the real world for a bit longer to truly determine what I wanted to do. My first job after graduating from BU was at Raytheon, working on the Patriot missile defense system where I tested electro-optical beam steering units. 

Can you share more details on your career path and – specifically – what were the critical moments that got you to where you are today?

My career path has been predominantly driven by relationships as opposed to ‘moments’. It’s been my connections that have led me to almost every opportunity I’ve had. I got my first job at Raytheon thanks to a connection who worked there and gave me a tip that they were looking for a greater number of qualified, female candidates, so I applied. I’m not sure I’d have known about that role if my connection hadn’t told me about it – and given me the confidence to apply right out of my master’s program. After Raytheon, it was another referral that led me to interview at Global Foundries. I was one of the youngest applicants, but my contact assured me I was right for the role, and it led to several years of success before I made my way to Alert Innovation and Symbotic through similar connections. I’ve kept in touch with many of the people I’ve forged relationships with throughout my career to this day. You never know where your next opportunity could come from!

What is your current role and responsibilities?

As the Director of Systems Engineering at Symbotic, I manage a variety of things, but my primary focus is to produce clear concepts of operations that define and document how our complex systems function. With the full scope of our systems and customer needs in mind, I produce deliverable requirements to guide our engineering teams to deliver solutions that not only uphold, but exceed our customer expectations. 

Looking back, is this where you thought you’d be professionally? Was it always your goal to be in this position?

No, this is not at all where I thought I’d be professionally, nor is it what I set out to do. When I decided to get my master’s in engineering, it wasn’t with the goal of becoming a director of engineering. At the time, I simply wanted to continue school, and it seemed like a logical next step. I believe it’s my liberal arts background that has served me most to get me to where I am today. It didn’t just give me a well-rounded education, it made me a more well-rounded person, especially as a thinker and leader. 

For people who are looking to be in a similar position, what advice would you give to others in terms of helping them achieve their career goals?

Communication is key. It’s a cliché, but it’s true. Cultivate a broad understanding and ask questions to truly understand the “why” of a situation. Don’t just accept the answer that is given: dig in further to understand all the little pieces and to get the full view. Beyond that, 50% of the job is helping the organization to move in a more cohesive direction, so it’s important to figure out how to positively influence at all levels, from entry level to the CEO: how to communicate in their language, ensure you understand all the moving parts, and determine or recommend the best course of action based on that full view. 

Relationships are so important, too, in terms of who and how you influence. With that in mind, make friends and help support others whenever you can – you never know where it will lead you. 

What are the most important skills that you need to do your job well?

Communication and influence are non-negotiable when it comes to required skills. Furthermore, truly understanding the end-to-end vision from all angles is critical to being as efficient as possible and avoiding any oversights while delivering against often tight timelines. Always be curious and ask lots of questions. I find by maintaining a “tell me more” attitude that keeps the conversation flowing, you can often glean critical additional details that greatly help your understanding.

What do you find most interesting/rewarding about your work?  What’s the most challenging?

Unintentionally, the theme for me is ‘connections’, again. The most rewarding part of my work is the relationships I build across my network. Some of the smartest, most dedicated and passionate people that I know are the people I work with and learn from every day. 

The most challenging aspect is figuring out how to influence business leaders at the highest level. It’s truly an art of tailoring needs and questions in a way leadership understands – and delivering information in quick pitches to capitalize on the limited time they have to give. 

What is your proudest professional accomplishment?

I’m quite proud of the work I’ve done to advocate for the value that systems engineers provide – something which can often be overlooked. A particularly meaningful memory was when a former manager, who now speaks on building and leading successful startups, shared that he emphasizes the importance of hiring strong system engineers early. He said that he initially underestimated the scope and value of my work, and that working with me helped reshape his entire perspective of the role. It’s incredibly rewarding to know that my impact has inspired him to champion the value of system engineers to entrepreneurs and emerging founders, especially as this message creates a pathway for new talent to make significant contributions earlier in their careers.

What advice do you have for recent college graduates?

Be open to different opportunities than you were expecting. Your life can go in so many different directions. Make friends and see where it goes. It really can be as simple as that. 

DealRoom‘s mission is to create a world where M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) enables organizations, and the ambitious people who build them, to achieve their full potential.

Greg Lord, CEO, shares details on the company and what it’s like working there.

In this video

Who is DealRoom

DealRoom is a Boston-based technology company that provides an AI-powered operating system for buyer-led mergers and acquisitions. The company focuses on modernizing and streamlining the M and A process to enable organizations and ambitious professionals to achieve their full growth potential.

What does DealRoom do and how does its product work

DealRoom offers software designed specifically for buyer-led M and A transactions. Its platform replaces traditional, fragmented M and A tools with an integrated operating system. The platform incorporates artificial intelligence to automate complex workflows, manage due diligence, organize document repositories, and streamline post-merger integration for corporate development teams and acquirers.

Who are the key customers of DealRoom

DealRoom serves corporate development teams, private equity firms, strategic buyers, and enterprise organizations engaged in acquiring businesses. Their customer base includes companies seeking to modernize their deal flow, reduce administrative overhead, and execute seamless post-close integrations.

What is the culture like working at DealRoom

The work culture at DealRoom emphasizes innovation, ambition, and continuous improvement. Employees operate in an environment centered on solving complex financial technology problems using modern software practices and AI implementation.

Why should Boston Tech job seekers consider working at DealRoom

DealRoom offers Boston Tech candidates the opportunity to join a growing company in the enterprise fintech and AI space. Job seekers looking for roles in software engineering, product management, sales, or customer success can work directly on cutting-edge AI implementation for high-value corporate finance operations.

Episode 442 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Tess Michaels, CEO & Founder of Clasp.

When you look at several positions across the healthcare industry, clinical education is a strict requirement for the job… unlike business, where higher education is an option.

Yet, the cost of that education creates a massive barrier for students, while healthcare employers struggle with open positions and a very high annual turnover rate. According to a recent survey by Clasp, 70% of surveyed clinicians were turning to sports betting platforms like Kalshi, DraftKings, and FanDuel just to cover tuition and living expenses.

It’s a mess.

The good news is that Tess, who grew up in a family of healthcare professionals, saw this problem and did what any great serial entrepreneur would do: she built a solution.

Clasp is taking a unique approach to this situation.  Think of them as the ROTC for healthcare, where Clasp connects large healthcare employers with clinical talent early while they are still in school. Employers commit to student loan repayment, and students commit to a multi-year retention period.

Clasp is one of those businesses that just makes sense, creating a win-win-win situation for students, schools, and employers alike.

The company recently announced a $20 million Series B round of funding to help accelerate the growth of its business.

In this episode, we cover:

• Tess’s background story and what helped shape her “non-quitting spirit.”
• What led her down the entrepreneurial path to starting a company while at Penn Wharton which was acquired.
• The foundational years she spent in investment banking and private equity.
• The inspiration behind Clasp and how its business model works.
• Details on their round of funding and how founders should conduct reference checks on investors.
• The story of landing the single-word domain, Clasp.com.
• Her biggest lessons learned while building Clasp.
• How she is using AI and detailed playbooks to prepare for maternity leave.
• And more!

OnRamp is the customer onboarding and engagement platform that accelerates time-to-value and time-to-revenue, now supercharged with agentic AI.

Connor Farrell, VP of Sales, shares details on the company and what it’s like working there.

In this video

Who is OnRamp and what service does OnRamp provide?

OnRamp is a fast-growing customer onboarding and engagement platform built to accelerate time-to-value and time-to-revenue for businesses. Unlike traditional project management software, OnRamp provides a dedicated customer-facing experience that guides new clients from contract signature through go-live. The platform incorporates Arrow, a suite of agentic AI capabilities that automates tasks and assists customer success managers, implementation engineers, operations teams, and analytics personnel.

Who are the target customers and industries served by OnRamp?

OnRamp serves a wide range of organizations, with approximately half of its client base in enterprise technology, SaaS software, and hardware. The company also supports hundreds of main street businesses and major organizations across healthcare, consumer goods, and retail. Highlighted client accounts include Cardinal Health, CVS, Anheuser-Busch, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Hulu.

What is the funding status and recent growth trajectory of OnRamp?

OnRamp is scaling rapidly within the Boston technology ecosystem. The company recently secured its Series A funding round and has been expanding its headcount significantly across all departments. Product growth is centered around extending the automation footprint of its Arrow agentic AI capabilities and broadening features beyond initial onboarding into larger segments of the lifecycle.

What is the workplace culture and hiring approach at OnRamp?

OnRamp fosters an environment tailored for high-agency professionals who want to make an immediate impact. The workplace balances aggressive growth goals with a supportive team atmosphere and community involvement. Employees are expected to achieve quick wins early in their tenure; sales representatives typically start customer conversations within their first few days, and engineers deploy code to production during their first forty-eight hours on the job.

What growth opportunities and product roadmap lie ahead for OnRamp?

OnRamp plans to continue expanding its AI agent capabilities, giving teams pre-trained agents designed to resolve complex workflow bottlenecks. Beyond core onboarding and implementation, OnRamp is expanding its platform features to service a broader scope of the end-to-end customer journey, offering employees significant opportunities to build and scale new product offerings. http://googleusercontent.com/youtube_content/1

Applause is the world leader in testing and digital quality. Brands today win or lose customers through digital interactions, and Applause alone can deliver authentic feedback on the quality of digital assets and experiences, provided by real users in real-world settings.

Aatish Salvi, CEO, shares details on the company and what it’s like working there.

In this video

Who is Applause and what service does Applause provide?

Applause is the global leader in managed software testing services and digital quality. The company delivers real-world feedback on digital assets and software applications by utilizing a fully managed platform alongside a global community of real users and digital testing experts. Instead of relying solely on artificial lab environments or standard off-shoring, Applause provides human-in-the-loop validation, AI evaluation, user experience research, accessibility testing, and payment flow verification for major enterprise software products.

Who are the key customers and industries served by Applause?

Applause serves leading international enterprises across multiple industries, including global tech firms, digital entertainment brands, financial institutions, retail organizations, and automotive leaders. Prominent brands relying on Applause for digital quality and software release confidence include Google, Microsoft, PayPal, Starbucks, Vodafone, and BMW.

What is the background and leadership vision of CEO Aatish Salvi at Applause?

Chief Executive Officer Aatish Salvi leads global business strategy and daily operations at Applause, focusing on expanding the platform to support agentic AI-powered software experiences and broad testing coverage. With over two decades of engineering and executive leadership experience, Aatish Salvi previously held senior engineering, product, and AI leadership roles across tech companies such as TripAdvisor Smarter Travel Media, Hasbro, Teikametrics, Nanigans, and LoopIt.

What is the workplace culture and core values at Applause for job seekers?

Applause is recognized as an award-winning workplace in the Boston tech community that balances high-growth goals with an authentic employee experience. The company environment values community engagement, open communication, and personal development. Internal workplace culture centers around five core pillars: Create Value for Customers, Be Accountable, Crush Your Goals, Celebrate Authenticity, and In It Together.

Why should Applause be on the radar for Boston tech job seekers?

Applause stands out as a stable yet highly innovative technology leader in the Greater Boston area. The company offers competitive employee benefits, structured onboarding, continuous training, 401k plans, and parental leave. With its continuous expansion into AI testing, automation, and real-world user quality assurance, Applause provides tech candidates in engineering, product, customer success, and operations direct opportunities to scale scalable testing solutions used by millions of global consumers.

10Beauty is building intelligent robotic systems that make self-care effortless, empowering, and seamlessly integrated into everyday life.

Alexander Shashou, Co-CEO shares the details on 10Beauty and what it’s like to work there.

In this Video

Who is 10Beauty?

10Beauty is a Boston-based robotics company developing intelligent, autonomous consumer robotic systems. Founded by co-founders Alexander Shashou and Justin, the company is reinventing the self-care experience by creating the world’s first fully automated, full-service robotic manicure machine.

Using advanced computer vision, cameras, and artificial intelligence, the machine performs every step of a traditional manicure—including polish removal, filing, cuticle buffing, painting, applying top coats, and drying—with zero manual intervention required.

What stage of growth is 10Beauty currently in?

10Beauty is transitioning from R&D into active commercial deployment and market expansion:

• The company has raised approximately $70 million in total funding, including a recent $23.5 million funding round led by Story Ventures and Third Prime.
• The team has expanded to around 72 employees, with 60 of those team members based in the Boston engineering center.
• The machine has moved beyond the lab environment and is deployed live across commercial locations in major markets like Boston, Chicago, and New York.
• Over 850 retail and salon locations have been signed for future machine rollouts.

What product is 10Beauty building?

10Beauty is building a consumer-facing robotic hardware and software ecosystem:

• Autonomous Hardware Unit: A compact, salon-grade machine designed for placement in retail stores, hotels, and traditional beauty salons.
• All-in-One Manicure Pod: A single-use, hygienic cartridge system containing the polish, top coat, sponges, cuticle softener, and single-use brushes. The robot retrieves tools directly from the pod to complete the service.
• Computer Vision and AI Suite: Embedded sensors and camera systems that dynamically map diverse hand shapes and fingernail structures in real time.

Who are 10Beauty’s main customers and enterprise partners?

10Beauty operates on a B2B2C model, partnering directly with major corporate retailers, hospitality brands, and beauty providers:

• Ulta Beauty: Deployed in select retail salon settings, expanding automated nail care to existing customer touchpoints.
• Nordstrom: Deployed in flagship department store locations like the Natick Mall.
• Regional Salons: Active in professional nail salons across markets like Chicago and Yonkers, NY.
• Upcoming Enterprise Expansion: Expanding into major hotel and hospitality chains to offer automated self-care on-site.

Why should tech professionals join 10Beauty?

For engineering and technology talent in the Boston area, 10Beauty offers unique career opportunities:

• Production-Level Consumer Robotics: Engineers work on real-world deployments directly serving thousands of end users, moving past theoretical R&D.
• Cross-Disciplinary Technical Challenges: Roles span hardware engineering, computer vision, AI model training, robotics control systems, and complex supply chain logistics.
• Category Definition: Employees participate in pioneering an entirely new category of physical consumer robotics.
• Strong Backing and Leadership: Led by repeat founders with past exit experience, backed by top-tier hardware and tech venture funds.

Episode 441 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Assil Halimi, CEO & Co-Founder of Apollo Atomics.

Today we are diving into a topic that is way outside my typical comfort zone: nuclear energy. While fossil fuels still account for roughly 85% of global energy, nuclear power offers incredible energy density, yet conventional reactors take over a decade and billions to build.

Apollo Atomics is changing that. Through his research at MIT, Assil realized that existing designs for nuclear haven’t evolved in decades and he set out to change that with a breakthrough approach.

Apollo Atomics is an advanced reactor company developing compact pressurized water reactors designed to accelerate nuclear deployment. The company’s core breakthrough is a proprietary compact steam supply system that delivers approximately an order of magnitude higher power density than conventional designs, allowing Apollo to dramatically shrink the reactor while maintaining the same power output.

The key benefits for all of this is time and money.  The resulting reactor platforms are designed to be factory built, transported by truck, and deployed in less than two years using commercially available fuel, established supply chains, and existing regulatory pathways. 

The company recently announced an oversubscribed $31 million seed round of funding led by FCVC, with participation from Y Combinator, Alumni Ventures, Robinhood Ventures, and notable angels including Paul Graham.

In this episode, we cover:

• Advice on how to shift from academic research to an entrepreneurial mindset, plus advice on pitching Hardtech startups.
• Assil’s background story and how his interest in nuclear power originated.
• His time as an MIT Research Scientist and his process for working on this problem.
• How he met his co-founder, Drew Walker, and the origin story of Apollo Atomics.
• The breakthrough moment and all the details on how their technology works.
• Why nuclear is the safest way of making electricity.
• Their experience at Y Combinator, including a funny story about smoke in the parking lot.
• And, so much more!

Podcast Sponsor:

This podcast is brought to you by one of the strongest longtime supporters of the local startup ecosystem, Silicon Valley Bank, a division of First Citizens Bank. With more than 1,500 bankers and relationship advisors and $44B in loans as of Q4 2025 – SVB delivers expert guidance, specialized products and a team that knows the innovation economy inside and out. Learn more at SVB.com.

Podcast Transcript

Host: Keith Cline

Guest: Assil Halimi, CEO & Co-Founder of Apollo Atomics

Keith Cline:

Assil, thanks so much for joining us.

Assil Halimi:

Thank you for having me.

Keith Cline:

I’m excited to talk to you. This podcast has been going on for about eight years now, and I cover different lanes—tech, software, and AI, of course. But I like to stretch myself. Great people like Rob Biederman, who runs an accelerator called TNT, have been introducing me to really extraordinary entrepreneurs that are way outside my comfort level.

We’re going to talk about a modern nuclear power company and mini nuclear power plants—topics that are way outside my pay grade! If I fumble on any of the concepts, please pick me up, because I’m here to absorb and learn.

Before we get into Apollo Atomics, you’ve gone through an intense journey of PhD research. There comes a point in time where you ask, Is there a commercial opportunity here that we can actually create a company around? That can be a struggle for scientists and researchers who want to pursue an entrepreneurial path. What advice would you give to someone who has been working on research for years and wants to evaluate the commercial potential?

Assil Halimi:

First, you have to identify whether you actually want to build stuff versus purely loving research. I know many people who just want to do fundamental research, solve mathematical problems, or theorize about phenomena in the universe without needing to prove it during their lifetime—and they’re completely fine with that.

For me, that was not the case. I wanted to solve hard problems and see the results to confirm my assumptions within my lifetime.

If you are more of a builder and want to disrupt a highly capital-intensive industry, you need a credible path to de-risk the technology. In our case, we focused on one single innovation within an existing, highly mature technology called Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs). We said, “If we can disrupt this one component, we can disrupt the entire deployment model of nuclear power plants.” That allowed us to start small and scale later.

If your thesis requires disrupting everything at once, you need massive capital from day one. During my PhD, when I first wanted to build new reactors, I started with the final vision. I remember my first investor meeting where I said, “This is what I want to build, it’s better than any other reactor, and I need $300 million.” They looked at me like, No way!

You then have two choices: either go back to pure science or figure out a staircase approach to risk. You start small, de-risk, and show that at a smaller scale, you can achieve at least a 10x gain. It shouldn’t be an incremental change—if it’s incremental, you should do it as R&D inside an existing company or license the patent. But if it offers a 10x, 100x, or greater impact, there’s a venture story to tell. Step one is building a small prototype with pre-seed or seed capital.

Keith Cline:

How do you navigate the mindset shift from deep research to pitching venture capitalists, building a team, managing lawyers, and building a company?

Assil Halimi:

That’s a great point. As a scientist, you want to go as granular as possible and analyze every scenario. An investor says, “I have 30 seconds. Tell me what you do and why it’s a good idea.”

It’s a funnel approach. On one end, you must know every technical detail inside and out; on the other end, you must articulate the value proposition in 20 seconds.

You break down what you’re building while establishing clear differentiation. For us, we make the most compact nuclear reactors, deployable in less than 24 months, with the highest uptime.

Those three statements cover:

1. Highest power density: A technical feature enabling compact design.
2. Under 24-month deployment: Solving the market’s urgent need for fast energy.
3. Highest uptime: Focusing on reliability, which data centers critically require.

You need technical mastery on one side and simple, compelling statements on the other that investors instantly grasp.

Keith Cline:

Pitching requires practice and feedback. How long did it take you to refine your pitch into a conversational flow?

Assil Halimi:

I have a non-conventional approach. First, you must convince yourself that it’s worth it—especially in hard-tech. With software, you can start with a story and pivot along the way. In hard-tech, you must build deep conviction around the product and where the industry needs to go.

From there, the pitch should be tailored to the specific investor. General advice says to have one fixed pitch deck. When we raised our Seed round, we used just four or five slides.

Because we had questioned our own assumptions and analyzed every point of potential failure, we were prepared for completely different questions from different investors—whether about regulations, capital intensity, or safety. We could address how nuclear safety has evolved over the past 15 years to be an order of magnitude safer than legacy operating plants.

In academia, you present a paper for 10 minutes with slides and answer questions for 10 minutes. Investor pitches shouldn’t be lectures; the best pitches are collaborative conversations.

Keith Cline:

How did you structure those four or five slides?

Assil Halimi:

We led with the team—our backgrounds and why we are qualified.

Next was the product before and after: how nuclear plants are built today, what is different with our design, and why it’s valuable.

Then we showed something tangible: our test reactor running out of MIT to show we’ve built real hardware.

The last slide was our timeline: where we are today and our milestones over the next 1 to 3 years.

We kept backup slides for business models, project financing, regulatory pathways, and supply chains, but leaving the floor open for investors to guide the conversation worked extremely well.

Keith Cline:

That’s fantastic advice—keep it simple and lead with the team.

Let’s rewind the clock. Where did you grow up, and what were you like as a child?

Assil Halimi:

I grew up in Algeria, North Africa. As a child, I was intensely curious and read about politics, literature, and science. My father was an engineer who was passionate about technology, and my mother was a judge who focused on social sciences—she used to tell me that humans are the most complex machines! I had a balance of exposure to technology and human systems.

I wanted to be an astrophysicist when I was young, but I realized that in astrophysics, you might theorize something and someone proves it 200 years after you’re dead. I wanted the satisfaction of conceptualizing a theory, building it, testing it, and seeing the results. That led me to engineering and energy.

I studied electrical engineering alongside economics because if you want to commercialize a physical product, you must understand finance, economics, and how products are bought and sold.

Later, during an internship working on electrically propelled aircraft, I was reviewing a NASA roadmap comparing energy sources. Uranium stood out by far as having the highest energy density in nature—a million times more dense than fossil fuels! From a physics perspective, the potential was immense. I asked myself: Why isn’t this the cheapest, most dominant source of energy on Earth? That sparked my deep focus on nuclear power, and I moved to France after high school.

Keith Cline:

What eventually brought you to MIT for your PhD?

Assil Halimi:

I first came to MIT as an intern, and that’s when I found the problem I wanted to dedicate my life to solving. At MIT, you feel like you are standing on the edge of current knowledge, looking at the next step for human progress.

Before starting my PhD, I wanted practical operational experience. I returned to Europe and worked on reactor operations, specifically fuel reloads for Belgium’s nuclear fleet—which supplied 50% of the country’s electricity. Experiencing critical infrastructure operations firsthand was invaluable. After that, I moved back to the U.S. to start my PhD at MIT.

Keith Cline:

What was your PhD program like?

Assil Halimi:

It was very entrepreneurial. At MIT, there are no limits—the only limit is yourself. Most research scientists work on one project, but I was so excited that I worked on four simultaneously. I collaborated with leading nuclear reactor manufacturers and utilities across Europe and the U.S.

That exposure showed me how legacy nuclear engineers think, what matters, and what doesn’t. I began theorizing how a next-generation nuclear power plant should be built—integrating material science, fuel design, thermal hydraulics, and project finance.

Keith Cline:

How did you bridge all those disciplines?

Assil Halimi:

To be a designer, you must be humble enough to admit you aren’t the sole expert in every field. My core technical specialty is nuclear fuel. For thermal hydraulics or materials, I relied on world-class experts.

For finance, I took corporate finance classes at MIT Sloan. MIT allows you to challenge design assumptions against world authority figures in nuclear radiation, material science, and project finance within a single environment.

Keith Cline:

Let’s talk about Apollo Atomics. What is the current global landscape for energy?

Assil Halimi:

Fossil fuels account for roughly 85% of global primary energy consumption today. Projections show that 30 years from now, that share will still be around 82% to 83%. We haven’t seen a fundamental shift; overall energy demand is growing, so we are adding renewables while simultaneously adding more oil, gas, and coal.

Historically, France proved that rapid decarbonization is possible. During the 1973 oil crisis, Prime Minister Pierre Messmer launched a national fleet build of nuclear reactors. Within 15 years, France reduced oil and gas in its electricity mix from 90% down to 20%.

Nuclear is scalable, clean, and non-intermittent—it doesn’t depend on weather or solar irradiation.

However, conventional nuclear power plants have two major drawbacks:

1. Speed to deployment: They take 10+ years to build, compared to 18 months for a natural gas plant.
2. Cost: They have become hyper-complex, on-site construction projects costing up to $17 billion per plant.

On the flip side, nuclear offers carbon-free energy at a 95%+ capacity factor.

Apollo’s thesis isn’t to reinvent the entire reactor—with unproven fuels, coolants, or moderators. Instead, we start with proven Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) technology and introduce one single design breakthrough: dramatically shrinking the footprint of the largest physical component—the steam generator—by 10 to 20x.

That reduction allows us to fully assemble the reactor inside a factory rather than on a construction site, while maintaining high power output. Size represents cost, while power represents revenue. By building high-power, compact reactors in a factory, we deliver high quality assurance, predictable timelines, and truck-transportable modules that connect directly to a steam turbine on site.

Keith Cline:

Nuclear fuel contains one million times more energy density than coal. What was your specific technological breakthrough to extract that energy compactly?

Assil Halimi:

Every thermal power plant converts heat into steam, which turns a turbine generator to produce electricity. The component converting heat into steam is the steam generator.

In the 1950s, when civil nuclear energy began, engineers took legacy steam converters designed for coal and natural gas plants and attached them to uranium fuel. You had fuel with a million times higher energy density paired with a mediocre, massive converter.

We designed the right converter—a compact steam supply system engineered specifically to extract intense energy density safely and efficiently. If you don’t remove that heat effectively, energy remains trapped in the fuel, leading to core meltdown risks. Our technology safely extracts that energy to generate continuous power for AI, industrial manufacturing, and communities.

Keith Cline:

How do you address safety concerns with the public and investors?

Assil Halimi:

There is perception of risk, and there are actual numbers. Statistically, nuclear is the safest form of electricity generation. Factoring in every historical accident since the 1950s, casualties per unit of energy produced are lower than coal, natural gas, solar, or wind.

Furthermore, energy consumption correlates directly with human life expectancy. Providing clean, abundant energy extends and saves lives.

Modern reactor designs are an order of magnitude safer than the technology used 30 to 40 years ago during Three Mile Island or Chernobyl.

Keith Cline:

How did you meet your co-founder, Drew Walker?

Assil Halimi:

I raised our pre-seed round as a solo founder. I then sought a co-founder with complementary operational experience in scaling companies.

A friend at Tesla introduced me to Drew, who had built two previous startups and had recently moved to New England. We worked together for a few months, hit it off, and he joined as co-founder.

Keith Cline:

Where is Apollo Atomics today in terms of product development and commercialization?

Assil Halimi:

We built a working mini-reactor demonstrator at MIT, proving an order-of-magnitude reduction in footprint from fuel to condenser.

We recently closed our Seed round to build a 20x more powerful commercial-scale facility outside of MIT to demonstrate megawatt-range output.

Commercially, we have over 20 gigawatts in signed Letters of Intent (LOIs), are finalizing contracts, and are progressing on state and federal regulatory permitting. Our goal is to deploy the first commercial, factory-built advanced nuclear reactor from a startup in the U.S.

Keith Cline:

How do your reactor platforms address different market demands, including AI data centers?

Assil Halimi:

We offer scalable, factory-built reactor platforms at 10 MW, 50 MW, and 300 MW (which can be combined for gigawatt-scale campuses).

The 10 MW module is ideal for remote locations or “behind-the-meter” data center applications. Right now, the electrical grid faces massive interconnection backlogs. Hyperscalers and AI data centers need dedicated, off-grid power generation that can be deployed rapidly without waiting years for grid connection. Multiple 10 MW or 50 MW modular units provide redundancy so power stays continuous.

Keith Cline:

What was your experience going through Y Combinator?

Assil Halimi:

Y Combinator was one of the best decisions we made. Before joining, people questioned whether YC was right for a hard-tech nuclear company. But YC partners connected us with hard-tech alumni, and YC actually funds more hard-tech startups per year than almost any other fund. The network and peer community are extraordinary.

We also had a funny moment during a fireside chat with Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston. We had brought our unfueled reactor demonstrator to the YC parking lot to show the setup. During the chat, Jessica noticed smoke rising outside. Five minutes later, as the smoke got thicker, someone shouted, “Isn’t there a nuclear company in this batch with a demo in the parking lot?!” Everyone turned around, and I had to stand up and reassure them, “It’s not fueled, it’s not operating, it’s not us!” It turned out to be unrelated, but it was great PR!

Keith Cline:

That is hilarious! What do you enjoy doing for fun outside of building Apollo Atomics?

Assil Halimi:

Building a hard-tech company is a marathon, so I prioritize exercise, healthy eating, and sleep. I play soccer occasionally. I used to do amateur astronomy and astrophotography, which I’ll get back to after our Series B or C! For now, I’m giving every minute to building Apollo Atomics.

Keith Cline:

Assil, thank you so much for taking us through your journey, your pitch advice, and the incredible mission at Apollo Atomics.

Assil Halimi:

Awesome! It was great talking to you, Keith. Thank you!

Since 1969, Curriculum Associates has been united around one common purpose: to make classrooms better places for teachers and students.

Mark Haseltine, Chief Product & Technology Officer, shares the details on Curriculum Associates and what it’s like to work there.

In this Video:

Who is Curriculum Associates?

Curriculum Associates is an established education technology company focused on improving learning outcomes for students and saving time for teachers. Founded in 1969 and based in North Billerica near Boston, the company creates learning curriculum, assessment tools, and technology platforms. Its flagship product, iReady, reaches approximately one-third of K-8 students in the United States.

What does Curriculum Associates do?

Curriculum Associates develops integrated educational technology and instructional materials. The company builds assessment tools, personalized learning programs, and comprehensive literacy curricula like Magnetic Literacy for grades K-6. These programs aim to help students reach grade-level proficiency by fostering deep critical thinking, reasoning, and writing skills rather than simple rote learning.

How does Curriculum Associates use AI in its products?

Curriculum Associates builds with artificial intelligence intentionally and responsibly, prioritizing tools that directly support classroom teachers rather than trying to replace them. The company integrates voice AI technology, such as its acquired SoapBox Labs speech recognition engine tailored for children, to assess reading skills accurately. Every AI feature is extensively piloted in real classroom environments and evaluated based on its measured impact on student growth.

What is the company culture like at Curriculum Associates?

The culture at Curriculum Associates is driven by a shared mission to improve public education. Employees are motivated by the goal of helping all students achieve grade-level performance. The organization maintains a collaborative, purpose-driven environment where feedback from real educators directly informs product development and company strategy.

Why should tech talent join Curriculum Associates?

Tech professionals have the opportunity to build software at a massive scale that impacts millions of students and teachers across the country. Engineers, product managers, and designers work on complex real-world challenges in regulated, high-stakes classroom environments rather than simple consumer demos. Joining the company offers the chance to apply cutting-edge technology like AI toward meaningful social impact within the Greater Boston tech ecosystem.

Episode 440 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Eran Egozy, Professor at MIT and Co-Founder & CTO of Harmonix, the creators of Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

I love interviewing current entrepreneurs who are making waves in the platform shift to AI, but I am also a Boston tech historian with a passion for telling stories about the great tech companies of our past. And do I have an incredible one for you today.

Harmonix was a company that became a true cultural phenomenon in the late 2000s. It was an overnight success… well, not really overnight, but rather a 10-year journey of grit and iteration that resulted in video game franchises generating over $1B in revenue with more than 35 million units sold.

As you’ll tell, I majorly geeked out on this interview. I am not a big gamer, but Harmonix hit massive product-market fit for me: music, gaming, rock star… sign me up! The song selection also struck a chord (pun intended), as it was pure gold.

You’ll notice this episode is longer than my typical interview. I went long form because there were just too many amazing stories to tell, including:

• Eran’s background story and how he got his start playing the clarinet.
• Studying music and engineering at MIT.
• Meeting his co-founder, Alex Rigopulos, and how they landed Brad Feld as an early investor.
• The seven game iterations with modest success that eventually led to massive PMF with Guitar Hero proving the 8th time’s the charm!
• Blowing up and taking the market by storm, leading to their acquisition by MTV Games.
• Launching Rock Band with multiple instruments plus the behind-the-scenes story of The Beatles edition.
• His current role at MIT as Professor of the Practice in Music Technology.
• And, so much more!

I’m thrilled to share that The VentureFizz Podcast is a 2026 NEVYs Community Content Creator! I’ll be telling stories about New England’s innovation ecosystem, like this podcast interview, all the way to the NEVY Awards on December 3rd at House of Blues Boston. Presented by NEVCA. Purchase your tickets and join me at thenevys.com.

Podcast Sponsor:

This podcast is brought to you by one of the strongest longtime supporters of the local startup ecosystem, Silicon Valley Bank, a division of First Citizens Bank. With more than 1,500 bankers and relationship advisors and $44B in loans as of Q4 2025 – SVB delivers expert guidance, specialized products and a team that knows the innovation economy inside and out. Learn more at SVB.com.

Transcript

Keith Cline: Eran, thanks so much for joining us.

Eran Egozy: Pleasure to be here.

Keith Cline: I think I start off every podcast by saying I’m so excited for the conversation, because I generally am excited for every guest. I think what founders and investors are working on is important, extraordinary, and hard. But with this one, I’m just on a next-level fanboy level, because I spent way too much time playing Guitar Hero.

Eran Egozy: I’m sorry! I’m sorry about that.

Keith Cline: It absolutely nailed product-market fit for me. I love music. I’m not really a heavy video game person—I’m casual, I like sports games like Madden Football. It’s not like I had a major console at home where I just played games all the time. But this thing… I was like, Yeah, game on! It had the music genre that hit right at home with me, and I’m a casual guitarist.

It was this perfect meld of goodness for my soul. My kids were really young then, so this was probably my break.

Eran Egozy: Did you play with your kids?

Keith Cline: They were a little bit too young at that point—maybe two and four years old, so one would just kind of mess around with it.

As a Boston tech historian, I love telling the stories of great things that came out of Boston. I guarantee people know Guitar Hero and Rock Band were cultural phenomena. Very few franchises have sold 35 million units into households and generated over $1B in sales. Yet I bet most people ask, “That was a Boston company?” Boston is so humble that people don’t realize it was in their backyard. That’s why we have to tell this story.

Before we get into Harmonix, let’s talk about your background journey. Where did you grow up, and what were you like as a child?

Eran Egozy: Where I grew up depends on how far back you want to go! I’ve been in the Boston area for quite a while, but I was born in Israel, and we moved around a lot when I was a kid. My childhood felt kind of unstable. We moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee when I was in first grade, so my very first English had a deep Southern accent.

I was there for two years, then moved back to Israel for three years, and then we moved to Lexington, Massachusetts. One thing about my childhood is I always felt like I was behind. I’d show up in a new place and wouldn’t know the language or the math curriculum, so it was always a matter of, Okay, I’ve got to catch up and figure out what’s going on here.

Just as I’d finally learn English, acclimate, and make a couple of friends—boom, we’d move back to Israel. Now I was behind on Hebrew and missed two years of school there, so I had to catch up again. Right when I felt caught up, we moved to Boston, and my English wasn’t awesome. That was the story of my early childhood.

Keith Cline: What was your first computer?

Eran Egozy: My first real computer was an Apple II. Before that, I had an Atari 400. You had to be around back then to know what I’m talking about—it was the cheap version of the Atari computer, so the keyboard was flat without real keys. Mostly I played games on it, but the Apple II was my first real computer.

Keith Cline: From my research, you programmed Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on it. How did you figure out how to do that?

Eran Egozy: That was a project with my friend Eric Reisman. We were both musicians—I played clarinet, and he played violin. One day, I noticed he wasn’t just playing games or programming in BASIC; he was diving into machine language. He had a book on how to program the 6502 8-bit processor in machine language. I thought that was cool, so I started typing machine code to get programs running.

Back then, things weren’t overly complicated, so you could figure it out by reading the manual. Because we were into music, we wanted to create a music-playing program that was better than whatever came with the computer. We had a sound synthesizer board called a Mockingboard, which actually allowed real sounds and polyphony—multiple notes at once—which the built-in Apple speaker couldn’t do.

We set out to figure out how to get this computer to play music. Essentially, like MIDI, you tell it what the notes are, how long they are, and when they should play, and it goes through and plays them. But getting the music into it was tricky—there was no internet, no GUI, and no download options. The only way to enter data was to literally type hexadecimal values into the computer.

Every day after school, I had a giant 100-page score of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. I started at the top left corner: Okay, the violins are playing a D for one bar… and kept going. I got halfway through the first movement, which was a lot of work, but it was fun because it actually worked and played the piece!

Keith Cline: You are an actual musician, playing the clarinet. Why did you choose that instrument?

Eran Egozy: It was pretty random. I saw a TV program featuring different musical instruments and thought the clarinet sounded interesting. When we arrived in America for the second time, my parents asked if I wanted to try an instrument, and I said, “How about clarinet?” based on that memory.

They found me a teacher who was wonderful, inspiring, and caring. I started clarinet late compared to most kids who start in fourth grade—I was already in seventh grade. But I took to it and really enjoyed it.

Keith Cline: My fourth-grade instrument was the saxophone because I wanted to learn how to play the Star Wars anthem. I never learned it, and I never succeeded at the saxophone.

Eran Egozy: Which is funny because the Star Wars theme doesn’t even feature a saxophone! It shows how random instrument selection can be.

That reminds me of when I was at MIT. Someone asked if I could teach a kid who wanted to learn clarinet. I had never taught before, but I agreed. During the first lesson, the kid asked, “Do they make brass clarinets?” I said, “No, they’re made of wood.” The next lesson he asked, “Are you sure they don’t have a metal version?” I said no. Then he asked, “Does Kenny G play clarinet?” I said, “No, you’re thinking of a soprano saxophone! Sorry buddy, you’re playing the wrong instrument.” That was the end of the lessons!

Keith Cline: That’s a perfect segue into MIT, where you studied both electrical engineering/computer science and music. You really caught up academically.

Eran Egozy: Yeah, from always feeling behind, it eventually made for a good college essay! I got in, and I played music all through high school in the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, which is a fantastic group.

At MIT, my major was Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and music was my minor. Back then, they were totally separate tracks—ships passing in the night.

Keith Cline: Through 435 episodes of this podcast, I’ve noticed a huge correlation between successful tech founders and playing music.

Eran Egozy: Music is deeply mathematical and scientific in addition to being an art form. It activates so many different parts of your brain. The singing part of your brain isn’t even the same as the language part. It’s fascinating how culturally important it is to us as humans.

Keith Cline: You hear a song, and it connects dots in your memory—you remember being seven years old or watching a movie that came out that summer.

Eran Egozy: There’s something about how music enters your memory that is super deep. It’s why successful commercial jingles work so well.

Keith Cline: How did you transition into the MIT Media Lab for your master’s degree?

Eran Egozy: During my undergrad, I had a research position at the AI Lab in Kendall Square where iRobot was born. Rod Brooks was building robots two floors up, while I was downstairs working on chip interconnect architectures for parallel machines.

After a couple of years, I talked to the senior professor, Tom Knight, and said, “I don’t think this is my thing. I find this boring, and I don’t know if I want to work at a giant company on this.” Tom knew I was into music, so he said, “If you don’t like this, go to the Media Lab and talk to Michael Hawley.”

Mike Hawley—who unfortunately passed away a few years ago—was an amazing pianist and computer scientist who was right there when Steve Jobs developed the NeXT machine. He had a den in the basement of the Media Lab that was a playpen of awesome stuff: racks of audio gear, a nine-foot player piano, cameras, and lights. I walked in and thought, I’ve found my place!

I started working with him as an undergrad on random projects connecting music and computers. Then I met Tod Machover and Neil Gershenfeld, who were doing exciting things with computers and music, and that led me into the graduate program for my master’s degree.

Keith Cline: You worked on a project involving Penn & Teller doing software for music and magic?

Eran Egozy: In Tod Machover’s group, projects often ended up in performances or concerts. We did a cello project with Yo-Yo Ma and an electronic violin concerto with Ani Kavafian. Then Tod connected with Penn & Teller to design a magic-music trick, and I was the lead programmer. Working with them was fantastic.

Keith Cline: Are their offstage personalities similar to their stage personas?

Eran Egozy: Their onstage personas are an exaggeration of who they actually are. Teller talks in real life, but he’s understated and astute. Penn likes to be the center of attention.

Keith Cline: How did you meet your co-founder, Alex Rigopulos, and get Harmonix started?

Eran Egozy: Alex and I were office mates in Tod Machover’s group. We became fast friends, working together on grad school projects like a music joystick controller.

Alex graduated a year before me. When I graduated, I planned to look for a standard job, but Alex said, “Hey, let’s start a company!” My parents were chemists with PhDs, so I had assumed I’d get a PhD too. But I said sure!

We joke that we started the company because we were working on cool real-time music interaction projects in grad school, loved it, and realized no company would hire us to do wacky stuff like that—they’d want us adding features to Excel spreadsheets instead. So we started a company to hire ourselves!

Keith Cline: I read that you noticed a trend of gaming, tech, and music coming together, including a PlayStation game called PaRappa the Rapper. I laugh because my roommate in Malden was obsessed with that game and played it non-stop while we ate dinner!

Eran Egozy: When we started Harmonix, it had nothing to do with games! We were not a game company. Games were something we loved, but we thought our company was going to make “interactive music experiences.”

At the Media Lab, Yamaha and Sega were corporate sponsors. Yamaha was about building instruments, while Sega was about entertainment. Our goal was to build software that helped people feel more musical, similar to how a Yamaha keyboard auto-accompanies you when you press a key.

Keith Cline: What was your first product, The Axe?

Eran Egozy: The Axe was our first product—a CD-ROM software program, not a game. You booted it up, picked a song or genre, chose an instrument, and used a joystick connected to your computer. Moving the joystick left/right changed pitch, and pushing forward/back changed speed. It had an intelligent note-playing system underneath so whatever you did always sounded good.

We thought everyone would love it. We sold maybe 200 copies! It was so depressing. We spent two years burning through investor money. I pulled a double all-nighter right before shipping to fix bugs, only for it to completely flop.

We didn’t have a marketing budget, and no one understood what it was. Was it an instrument? A game? It was cool technology built without understanding who it was for or why they’d want it—a classic rookie startup mistake.

Keith Cline: How was it distributed?

Eran Egozy: Our strategy was to create bundled demos for computer manufacturers like Dell or Compaq, hoping users would try the demo pre-installed on new PCs and upgrade.

Keith Cline: Brad Feld was one of your early investors. How did he get involved?

Eran Egozy: Brad is an amazing guy. He and I were in the same fraternity at MIT, though at different times.

When Alex and I entered MIT’s business plan competition with a terrible plan, Brad happened to be one of the judges. I mentioned we were fraternity brothers. Out of the goodness of his heart, he helped advise us when we didn’t know what we were doing.

Our first round was $100K from friends and family. Brad led our second round of about $1M. It might have been one of his very first venture investments.

Keith Cline: After The Axe, how did you pivot to the Disney Epcot project, CamJam?

Eran Egozy: After The Axe failed, we looked at how to repurpose the tech. People got bored of The Axe after five minutes, but where is a five-minute experience an advantage? Theme parks!

We pitched Disney on an exhibit at Epcot Center. Instead of a joystick, we used a contactless spatial sensor—a frame that tracked your hand’s X/Y coordinates using hardware long before the Kinect existed. Moving your hands controlled music alongside Disney animations.

It ran at Epcot for years, and we got paid for it. But there are only so many theme parks, so while it was a moderate success, it wasn’t a scalable business.

Keith Cline: What was the third iteration?

Eran Egozy: Our third attempt was trying to install our interactive music software into Japanese karaoke systems. Karaoke in Japan was a multi-billion-dollar industry. Our idea was that while one person sang, another person could use our software to play an instrument along with them.

Doing business in Japan was expensive, and we didn’t understand the culture. We had meetings with top karaoke companies, and they showcased our prototype at a trade show.

I was at the trade show demoing the product, trying to gauge excitement, and Alex was nowhere to be found. It turned out Alex had already seen the writing on the wall. People were giggling out of politeness, but no one was jumping up and down. We misread Japanese politeness as commercial interest. It took us a year to realize it was another dead end.

Keith Cline: How did Frequency come about?

Eran Egozy: While in Japan, we saw massive lines outside arcades for a music game called Beatmania. People were queuing for an hour to put quarters in and play music.

We realized games provide a motivation loop that keeps players engaged. We retooled Harmonix entirely: laid off half the company and hired game developers like Greg LoPiccolo and Dan Schmidt.

That led to Frequency, our first true music game, published by Sony for the PlayStation 2. We went through intense game development crunch and shipped it in 2001.

Keith Cline: Building a gaming studio in Boston was unique at the time.

Eran Egozy: Looking Glass Studios was the big influence in Boston back then. They pioneered open-world 3D games like Thief and System Shock. Founded by MIT alumni, Looking Glass heavily influenced the local scene. MIT also created Spacewar! (one of the earliest video games) and Infocom (Zork).

Keith Cline: Did Frequency get traction?

Eran Egozy: Frequency gave us a legitimate business model: the publisher-developer relationship. Sony paid us to develop the game, handled manufacturing and distribution, and offered milestone/royalty potential.

Frequency sold 100,000 units. In console gaming, that’s modest, but Sony funded a sequel, Amplitude, which also sold 100,000 units.

After that, Sony wanted games with higher sales volume, so we partnered with Konami to make Karaoke Revolution. It came with a microphone, tracked your pitch in real-time on screen, and awarded points for singing correctly.

Keith Cline: So Frequency, Amplitude, and Karaoke Revolution built the mechanics—3D scrolling music tracks and real-time pitch/hardware input—that eventually led to Guitar Hero.

Eran Egozy: Exactly. Entrepreneurship is about iteration. You learn from each attempt until you hit product-market fit.

Before making Guitar Hero in 2005, we had made seven video games and ten total products.

Frequency and Amplitude had the 3D scrolling note highway, but the gameplay was abstract. Karaoke Revolution proved that physical peripherals and on-screen avatars worked.

When we combined them for Guitar Hero—a plastic guitar peripheral where you play rock guitar solos along a scrolling note highway—everything clicked. Playing rock guitar had a huge cool factor.

Keith Cline: How did the partnership with Red Octane happen for Guitar Hero in 2005?

Eran Egozy: Red Octane was a small startup founded by Charles and Kai Huang. They knew how to manufacture hardware in China, having built high-end dance pads for Dance Dance Revolution.

They wanted to publish their own game, but weren’t game developers. We had game software expertise, but no hardware manufacturing capabilities. We partnered up: Red Octane manufactured the guitar, and Harmonix built the software in a fast nine-month development cycle.

Keith Cline: How did you select the setlist?

Eran Egozy: Harmonix was filled with opinionated musicians. Alex played drums, his brother Chris played guitar, Ryan Lesser played in a metal band, and Eric Brosius was in Tribe.

We focused the setlist on 70s and 80s rock with iconic guitar solos. We weren’t trying to make a pop playlist for everyone; we built a focused, high-energy rock list.

Because licensing original master recordings was difficult, we hired WaveGroup in LA to re-record high-quality “sound-alike” covers for the first two games. We secured iconic tracks like Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll,” The Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated,” White Zombie’s “Thunder Kiss ’65,” Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man,” and tracks by David Bowie and Deep Purple.

Keith Cline: What was it like the first time you held the guitar peripheral and played the working game?

Eran Egozy: Honestly, you’re so exhausted during development that you just hope there are no bugs!

I remember the very first crude prototype built by Dan Schmidt. There were no graphics—just dots on a screen and a score counter. Even then, people in the office were competing for high scores. That’s when we knew we had found the fun.

Keith Cline: How did Red Octane get the demo stations into Best Buy and GameStop?

Eran Egozy: Red Octane hustled! Best Buy buyers took a gamble on us.

Because the game came in a huge box with a plastic guitar, it took up massive retail space and cost $100 instead of $50. But having working interactive demo units in stores created lines out the door. Once people tried it, they had to have it. That was true product-market fit.

Keith Cline: How were sales after the 2005 holiday season?

Eran Egozy: After shipping, Alex told the company, “We’re going to make 75,000 people really happy, but now we need to figure out our next project.”

Then January came, and we sold more units in January than in December! Word of mouth exploded. Red Octane had to mortgage their houses to fund expensive injection molds for China factories to keep up with guitar demand.

Guitar Hero crossed 1 million units sold. We dropped all side projects and went straight into Guitar Hero II.

Keith Cline: Guitar Hero II sold over 3.1 million copies. What was that period like?

Eran Egozy: It was wild. Guitar Hero II ended with Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” and its 10-minute guitar solo!

Within six months of launching the first game, acquisition talks started. Red Octane was acquired by Activision, and in October 2006, Harmonix was acquired by MTV Games (Viacom).

Keith Cline: How did the transition to MTV Games create Rock Band?

Eran Egozy: Activision owned the Guitar Hero brand name through Red Octane, while Harmonix owned the software code and expertise.

MTV Games wanted to publish games and own an IP. Partnering with MTV gave us direct music industry relationships. We decided to build a new franchise from scratch: Rock Band.

With MTV, we made the commitment to license original master recordings instead of covers. We also expanded beyond guitar to full band gameplay: drums, bass, guitar, and vocals.

We pioneered downloadable content (DLC) for consoles. Rock Band launched with 40 songs, but we built an online store selling digital tracks for $2 each. We broke Xbox and PlayStation backend systems because they weren’t built for games selling thousands of individual DLC items. We eventually sold over 100 million DLC songs in Rock Band.

Keith Cline: What was the manufacturing effort like for Rock Band?

Eran Egozy: Rock Band came in a giant $200 box containing a guitar, drum set, microphone, and drumsticks.

Rock Band 1 sold 4 million units, and Rock Band 2 sold 6 million units. Manufacturing was insanely complex. We worked with multiple Chinese factories across Xbox, PlayStation, and Wii. We literally caused a global shortage of wooden drumsticks because we bought out worldwide inventory!

Keith Cline: Then came The Beatles: Rock Band. How did that happen?

Eran Egozy: Dhani Harrison (George Harrison’s son) was a fan of Guitar Hero. At a dinner with Alex Rigopulos and Van Toffler (Head of MTV), they cooked up the idea.

It took years to negotiate, but Alex met with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono, and Olivia Harrison. We recreated the Beatles’ entire career visually and musically.

Yoko Ono visited our studio to review John Lennon’s animations. At first she said, “That’s not him, he didn’t move like that!” Our artists re-animated him based on her feedback to make his movement authentic.

Keith Cline: You and Alex were named to the Time 100 list of most influential people. When did the magnitude of your impact hit you?

Eran Egozy: When I got the Time 100 email, I almost deleted it thinking it was spam!

It really hit home years later when I became a Professor of the Practice in Music Technology at MIT. Students told me, “That game changed my life.” It gave people who weren’t musicians the courage to pick up a real guitar or start a band.

Post Malone explicitly credits Guitar Hero as the reason he got into playing music and guitar. Hearing personal stories from parents and kids about how the games bonded families and inspired real musical journeys made it truly real to me.

Keith Cline: Who owns Harmonix today?

Eran Egozy: In 2021, Epic Games (creators of Fortnite) acquired Harmonix to power their in-game music experiences and virtual concerts. If you experience music features inside Fortnite today, that’s Harmonix technology.

I left Harmonix in 2016 to transition full-time to MIT.

Keith Cline: What are you focused on at MIT today?

Eran Egozy: I run a new master’s degree program in Music Technology at MIT. We just graduated our first cohort.

We brought together engineering and music into a unified graduate program. Graduates go on to work at music tech companies like Suno, Spotify, Apple Music, Adobe, and iZotope, or pursue PhD research. Learning to bridge technical engineering with human artistic expression makes for incredible product designers.

Keith Cline: How do you see AI impacting the music industry?

Eran Egozy: AI allows anyone to generate a song from a text prompt, which is wild, but it’s essentially deep remixing of training data.

Background “production music” (elevator music, hold music, simple background tracks) will likely shift entirely to AI. But for music people truly care about, human connection is irreplaceable. People want to see human performance, emotion, and storytelling. Streaming shrank record royalties, yet live touring exploded—people pay thousands to see artists like Taylor Swift live because human connection can’t be replicated.

Keith Cline: What three apps can’t you live without?

Eran Egozy:

1. News Apps: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Boston Globe.
2. Cursor: An AI code editor that makes software development 100x faster.
3. I don’t use social media, and I’m happily married, so that eliminates most other apps!

Keith Cline: Do you have a book recommendation for entrepreneurs?

Eran Egozy: Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most (from the Harvard Negotiation Project). It’s a management book about resolving human conflict, navigating flat organization dynamics, and getting aligned. Every founder should read it.

Keith Cline: Do you still perform music?

Eran Egozy: Yes! I perform regularly on clarinet with Radius Ensemble. We play four concerts a year at MIT’s new concert hall.

Keith Cline: Eran, thank you so much for taking the extra time to walk us through this incredible Boston tech story. It was an absolute blast.

Eran Egozy: It was a huge pleasure, Keith! Thanks for having me.