ALUMNI SUPPORT: DAVID TAYLOR

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.

These days, it’s easy for David Taylor to toast more than 30 years lot more from your failures” — prompted ABOUT CIE of experience in technology. All the 1981 Cal Poly electrical him to get involved with the Cal Poly The Cal Poly Center for Inengineering alumnus and business entrepreneur has to do is Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurnovation and Entrepreneuruncork a bottle of one of the dozen Rhone-style wines produced at ship (CIE). ship (CIE) helps students his latest venture, Cordant | Nelle Winery in Paso Robles, California. and community members acquire the entrepreneurial The son of a civil engineer who grew up in Bakersfield, Taylor has had like crazy. Now in a later part of life, fully develop a business. a longtime passion for wine. Cordant | Nelle, which now produces you’re not the worker bee but you As part of the CIE process, students are immersed in around 3,000 cases a year, comes at the end of a road marked with the can contribute as a mentor,” he said. three distinct innovation sweat and sacrifice of working with seven startup companies in Silicon “That’s why I’ve become re-engaged with programs: Learn, Prepare Valley and San Diego. Among the startups was CineForm Inc., which Cal Poly. If there are stories or mentorship and Launch. For more infordeveloped a video compression format used in movies like Slumdog opportunities to help others train as they mation on the CIE, visit: cie.calpoly.edu. Millionaire, the first digitally produced film to win the Academy Award come up, then that’s what I want to do.” 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 “In your early days, of course, you work skills needed to successTaylor, 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