ALUMNI SUPPORT: DAVID TAYLOR
Vintage Advice FROM DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY STARTUPS TO WINEMAKING, 1981 ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING ALUMNUS DAVID TAYLOR OFFERS STUDENTS A TASTE OF SUCCESS
After more than 30 years as a technology entrepreneur, electrical engineering alumnus David Taylor has found a new career at his Cordant | Nelle Winery in Paso Robles.
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hese days, it’s easy for David Taylor to toast more than 30 years of experience in technology. All the 1981 Cal Poly electrical engineering alumnus and business entrepreneur has to do is uncork a bottle of one of the dozen Rhone-style wines produced at his latest venture, Cordant | Nelle Winery in Paso Robles, California. The son of a civil engineer who grew up in Bakersfield, Taylor has had a longtime passion for wine. Cordant | Nelle, which now produces around 3,000 cases a year, comes at the end of a road marked with the sweat and sacrifice of working with seven startup companies in Silicon Valley and San Diego. Among the startups was CineForm Inc., which developed a video compression format used in movies like Slumdog Millionaire, the first digitally produced film to win the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, and was eventually sold to GoPro.
“CineForm was a 10-year labor of love, during which the founders didn’t collect a salary for two years,” Taylor said. “We just knew we had something, and we were a cat with nine lives that somehow managed to thrive after years of struggle.” Taylor said that struggle and others he experienced along the way — “As everyone says, you do learn from your successes but you learn a 28 SUMMER 2020 CENG.CALPOLY.EDU
lot more from your failures” — prompted him to get involved with the Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE). “In your early days, of course, you work like crazy. Now in a later part of life, you’re not the worker bee but you can contribute as a mentor,” he said. “That’s why I’ve become re-engaged with Cal Poly. If there are stories or mentorship opportunities to help others train as they come up, then that’s what I want to do.”
ABOUT CIE The Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) helps students and community members acquire the entrepreneurial skills needed to successfully develop a business. As part of the CIE process, students are immersed in three distinct innovation programs: Learn, Prepare and Launch. For more information on the CIE, visit: cie.calpoly.edu.
Taylor, who said he is “still amazed” by his Cal Poly education and the 13 job offers he had when he graduated, praised the CIE’s emphasis on combining business skills with engineering chops. “When I started, I wanted to concentrate on the technology, but today there’s so much more,” he said. “Now students can work on technology, evaluate if there’s a market for that technology and then develop a business plan to sell the technology. It’s really good.” n
