Spawn Box Setup Tech Demos

This is a bit of an odd one but little did 14 year old me know that this would be hugely impactful to my career.

Back in 2010 my dad was working for this company called SpawnLabs that was making this boxes that you could pug your game console into and stream the video to your PC anywhere in the world- along with your control inputs. This meant you could play your xbox 360 which is located at home in say Texas while on a business trip somewhere less in the world like California. It was pretty cool streaming tech at the time and something Sony and Microsoft eventually added similar versions of to their own consoles 10 years later.

Anyways, I was into film at this point in my life- making music videos or random short films but was looking to start making some money. My dad mentioned that his company needed to make set up tech demo videos for their products and they were looking for someone to make the video. I don’t remember if he suggested to me or if I volunteered but I ended up making the videos for them and a couple hundred dollars too :) It was my first tech demo of a few others past this point and it was the thing that push me to start by DBA in Austin and start paying taxes at 14. I would go on after this to make a few more videos for SpawnLabs, other tech companies, and even a music school. Not only was it the start of my short film career but ever since then I have kept ESD Productions on my resume and have told the entrepreneurial stories of my teenage years in various interviews. One such instance was in my interview with Epic Games and I mentioned I had worked on tech demos in the past and they just happen to be looking for someone to help produce some tech demos for Unreal Engine.