Harmonix founded on $100,000 capital

Speaking to CNN Money, Harmonix founders Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy have revealed that the company was founded on a $100,000 loan from friends and family.

"We raised an initial round of capital from friends and family, meager by today’s standards – $100,000," revealed Egozy. "But it lasted us a whole year because I was still living like a grad student.

"Somewhat selfishly, we just wanted to keep working on the cool things we were doing at the media lab. Our revenue was pretty much zero for five years."

In that time, Harmonix created a joystick-based music improvisation technology named Axe, which Rigopulos described as "a horrendous failure that led to a painful lesson". Subsequently, Harmonix underwent a transformation that saw it turn from a mmusic tech firm to a games company, resulting in Frequency, which received generous critical acclaim and brought in the money that lead to the Karaoke Revolution, Guitar Hero and Rock Band games.

To read the full interview, click here.