INTERVIEW WITH ANDY PAUL

(RGS 1968-1975)

What are your fondest RGS memories?

Learning how to sail with Dick Burroughs in the school sailing boat, called Bye Bye, and then in Portsmouth on a school organised sailing program. Playing rugby for the Colts in 73, we had a great team, and won most games. That was really my first introduction to playing team sports and you learn a lot from that, relying on other people and vice versa.

What were your favourite subjects and teachers?

I ended up veering over to Maths and Physics, which is what I studied at university. But I was pretty good at languages and learned Latin, French, German and Spanish at school. Latin of course being the basis for most of those. I mean who can forget Aubrey Scrase teaching the Latin conjugations!! The teachers that stand out, were not necessarily the ones that taught me the most, but the most colourful ones. So Aubrey and Keith Louis and Mr Brooks, (we called him Daddy Brooks), and of course Mr Wright, who taught Biology I think but also junior rugby. And of course Allan Sims, that wonderful Welshman.

What was it like returning back to RGS after 45 years?

Well amazing. I mean so different and the new buildings and swim centre and music studios, and the new library. And also it seemed to me that when I was talking to the Sixth Form students, they seemed a lot more educated than I remember being at that age. And a lot more confident.

Tell us about your early career, what were the early challenges you faced?

I mean the first few jobs were just learning about work and trying to find something that would pay for beer and petrol. I didn’t really have a strong idea of what I wanted to do when I left university. But working then in the UK, it seemed that there was no obvious path to getting anywhere in a large company, I felt stuck in these junior positions. Then I found work in one of the original semiconductor companies, Fairchild, an American company, where I was put into marketing and started to learn about how things got bought and sold and priced etc. That led to getting transferred over to the US where I moved into product marketing at Fairchild and other companies where I could start to define what products they should be making.

You founded Corsair in 1994 –to what do you attribute your success?

Well you have to start with a good team of like-minded people. And you have to have a clear plan. We were all engineers and I had a strong idea of what products to make. I think that by that time I had a good idea of what products made sense for people or companies to buy, and how to market and sell them. And I knew what key skills the people around me needed to have.

Can you summarise what your role entails and describe a typical week?

Very different now than 10 years ago. When we were small and growing we had a few weekly meetings that most of the key staff would attend, one for example on new products and keeping the R & D team on schedule, and one on Operations, making sure that production shipped things on time. And originally I did all the buying, all the accounting and ran the sales team. Now we are much bigger and a public company and we have VPs to do all those specialised roles, and I have a very competent President, who runs the day-to-day operations. I spend a lot of time with investors, and a lot of time looking at acquisitions. We have done seven acquisitions in the last five years and probably looked at 20 opportunities. And I spend a lot of time visiting our various manufacturing sites and offsite offices.

Walk us through your fascinating marketing model?

Since we are in the consumer hardware space you have to start by watching how consumers get their information on products. These days, for us, its mostly from influencers on Youtube or Twitch or via social platforms like Tiktok and Instagram. So we work with hundreds of influencers, some get free products, the ones with wider audiences get paid monthly fees. Then they will talk about our products and tell their viewers if they like the products or not (hopefully this is usually positive). That’s how we get product awareness, and we also sponsor esports teams and esports events to get the brand recognised. Then you move down the funnel to the point of sales, which these days is retailers like Amazon and also the search engines like Google. There is a fine art to picking which search words you want your products to show up in, and the obvious ones are expensive, so you have to watch how people are searching for products like the ones that you make. At the end of the day you have to balance what you are spending on tactical and digital marketing vs what effect it has and what the ROI is. If you make great products that everyone talks about when they are released, then you don’t need to do much else except make sure that they are in stock.

Corsair does a lot of work in the areas of environment and social impact. Why is this important to you?

Its important to everyone I think. And we have noticed that it is becoming more of an issue with younger generations. So it becomes helpful to our brand if we do things that our core audience cares deeply about. We do a lot of work with disadvantaged kids through various organisations like Save The Children and Make-A-Wish. And we are constantly trying to cut down our carbon footprint by looking at packaging, making sure it can be recycled and so on.

You are a generous supporter of the Changing Lives bursary scheme, why do you think this is important?

Education should be the number one priority for governments and communities. Its so clear that an educated society is going to do better in all aspects than a poorly educated society. And the best students need to go to the best schools so that they can realise their full potential. And if the best students can’t afford the best schools, well then that’s where I can help.

What are your personal gaming passions and pet peeves?

I really don’t have a lot of time to play games, although I did spend much of my youth in arcades. But where I can connect the most is with people who build their own gaming PCs because I love building things. Pet peeves, on gaming, it’s the way female gamers get treated on social networks. And on non-gaming, that would be the way that the uneducated masses talk nonsense on social networks.

With the fast pace at which technology evolves, what will the gaming landscape look like five or ten years from now?

Well I expect that the games will continue to get more and more immersive and I think will move more towards interactive entertainment than skill games. Its already moving that way, sort of like watching a blockbuster movie where you can participate. The gaming PC will probably remain as the platform for the gamers who want the most immersive experience. I expect screens will continue to get bigger and higher resolution, and the games more life-like. I expect that the way humans interact with games will change. We see that already with Virtual Reality set ups, but there are other technologies like head and eye tracking that means you can interact without just using your hands and fingers. And of course as phones get more and more powerful, and likely bigger, then more and more people will play games on phone platforms.

What advice would you give any entrepreneurial readers who are looking to launch a business?

Make sure you study carefully what the existing players are doing in the market you want to enter. You need to have something that is not offered in the current market in order for anyone to take notice of you. And try and do a three year business plan, and have others look at it, who have experience, probably not your best friend.

What does life beyond Corsair hold for you?

Well as I write this, I am sailing across the Atlantic for the first time. So a lot more sailing. I am a keen skier and also love scuba diving, and I like playing around with old cars. So as I wind down my work hours, then I have plenty of things to keep me busy.