A Closer Look
By graduation, he had become "hopelessly entrepreneurial" and declined to interview for a single job.
Stephen Brown, MBA '88
Managing Director, Entros, Seattle, Washington
Cheers, with a twist
An entrepreneur, to
Stephen Brown
, is like a good party host: Both are take-charge types with a knack for sensing what people need, and both require a good measure of spontaneity in order to supply it. As the managing director of Entros, a combination game room, bar, and grill, Brown demonstrates his point.
Every night, social adventurers, technophiles, and curiosity seekers venture to the renovated Seattle warehouse over which Brown and his partner, Andrew Forrest, preside. They come to undertake challenges like Buddha Ball, in which players learn to use biofeedback to control their stress levels by trying to remain calm while opponents throw taunts and catapult stuffed animals at them.
InterFace, Entros' biggest hit, is a futuristic vision of blindman's buff. As in the original game, one player talks a partner through an obstacle course. But communication is always complicated at Entros. For one thing, the game's blindfold is an elaborate helmet with all sorts of electrical connections. For another, the controller cannot simply walk alongside the sightless player but must instead participate from a separate room, following a partner's progress on a video display transmitted by a camera in the helmet. The controller relays instructions through an audio link back to the helmet, guiding the teammate through mazes, word games, and scavenger hunts. It's as perplexing as it sounds. From time to time, Entros guides must intervene to retrieve helmeted players who have wandered outside the bounds of the game.
In between games, guests can regroup over drinks or dinner at the enormous bar in the center of the facility, though the loud music and the commotion from the games are not exactly conducive to relaxation. If this doesn't sound like fun, maybe you just have to be there.
Entros evolved from Brown and Forrest's first venture into the entertainment business, Pearl's Oyster Bar in Palo Alto, which they opened shortly before Brown entered the Business School. Even then their approach was unconventional. They sought out a staff that many businesses would steer clear of: young, sociable people with busy outside lives and time to work only a couple of shifts a week -- "people we'd want to have at a party," Brown says.
Brown continued to manage Pearl's while attending the GSB. By graduation, he realized he had become "hopelessly entrepreneurial" and declined to interview for a single job.
Instead, he and Forrest reteamed with the idea of expanding on their success at Pearl's. "Some people would narrowly define what we were good at as running an oyster bar or something like that," says Brown. But they saw that their strength was choosing and managing a staff of young people.
In Seattle, the two started over by identifying the components of "a really great party." They sought out the same sort of people they had hired at Pearl's to serve as guides for the often intricate activities. With the addition of games, they introduced more structured entertainment to the free-form bar environment with which they were familiar.
They then chose a deliberately broad theme to link the games -- "Influence" was the inaugural installation -- and interviewed local "experts," like athletic coaches and professors, about the subject. The celebrity input was largely, Brown admits, a ploy to generate publicity. For the nuts and bolts of the games, he and Forrest relied on game designers from local arts organizations and science museums, and on a list of 20 or so specific criteria that he and Forrest drew up. Games must, for instance, be "easy to enter," and they must promote social interaction. "It's a very tight structure," Brown says.
The tie-in to any single theme, though, is quite loose. Brown wants to avoid pinning Entros' identity to an overly specific label. As for the name -- Entros -- it means nothing at all. Brown and Forrest settled on it, with the help of a naming consultant, because they wanted a title that carried no definite expectations.
What lies ahead for this entrepreneurial company? "Lately," says Brown, "we have really busted out of our walls. Microsoft hired us to build a game and take it to an event they were hosting to help launch a new product line. We created another game at the Washington State Convention Center for 3,000 trademark attorneys, and we are working with a Japanese travel and education company on ESL programs involving our games." And the bottom line: At the end of its third full quarter, Entros posted an operating profit -- way ahead of schedule.
Despite the rigors of launching a new business, Brown refuses to play victim to long hours and stress. From the outset, Brown designed his job to mesh with the way he wanted to live. He is determined not to let his business run his life. "I set up my life to be fun," he says.
This perspective, says Brown, is crucial for an entrepreneur. "If you define your worst possible failure as going out of business, you're never going to take a chance."
Debbie Gravitz
Stephen Brown at play in Supply Room 426 at Entros, his "intelligent amusement park" in Seattle.
Also in "A Closer Look":
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