Oral History Interview with Gaming Entrepreneur Rupert Meghnot, Founder of OrlandoPreneur

I became a U.S. citizen in May 1966. I was the youngest person in the room. I was sitting there holding my hand up and everything. It was a lot of fun! I had to learn the Constitution, all the amendments, the Bill of Rights. The whole shot and got quizzed on it and everything. So that was a proud moment I’ll never forget! Excerpt from an oral history interview with Rupert Meghnot on January 22, 2026 at the Orlando Public Library.

Rupert Meghnot is the Founder and Chief Collaboration Officer for OrlandoPreneur, a business networking community. He is a graduate of the Rollins College Crummer Graduate School of Business. His work as a Professor at Full Sail University and video gaming entrepreneur led him to found Burnout Game Ventures. He is the inventor of the Adjustable Holder for TV, Stereo and VCR Remote Control Units and the Full Motion Two-Seat Interactive Simulator. He was recognized by the Global Game Industry’s “50 over 50”. His work in the Central Florida Technology and Simulation Industry includes public and private work at the Central Florida High Technology Board, Central Florida Innovation Corporation, Martin Marietta Missile Systems Electronics, and his companies: Simulation Entertainment Group, and Virtual Entrepreneur. He is the winner of the Synapse Florida Entertainment Innovator of the Year for 2022 and Alignable’s Local Business Person of the Year for 2023.

LISTEN:

My name is Rupert Meghnot and I was born in London, England.

Is that where you grew up?

No. I grew up in Detroit, Michigan.

Do you want to tell us about that, how you got from one place to another or should I ask about your parents, what they did?

When I say grow up I mean, the typical understanding of it is where were you when you were a child. Technically I grew up in Florida, but after I was 26 years old. Yeah, so that’s basically up until I came here I spent most of my life in Detroit and then I spent four years in Richmond, Virginia.

What did your parents do for a living? What were they like?

My mother raised me. She was a very ambitious, driven, nurse anesthetist. And so, she, I mean a side story just about her, in honor of her. In 1955, she was Iranian – and to the people of Iran: Peace. And so, she, her father was the Agricultural Minister in Iran, so she was already very close to the Shah’s sphere of the family and all that. Then her husband was the Shah’s childhood friend. They grew up since fourth grade together. So in 1955, she divorces him in Iran, leaves her son and him, goes by herself to London where her sister was. Her sister was eventually head interpreter for Scotland Yard. So while she was in London, she studied nursing and anesthesiology and got her degree there, had me. Then came to Detroit because her brother was in Ypsilanti and he sponsored her and she got a job at Harper Hospital.

U.S. Citizenship

So she brought me to Detroit when I was 16 months old. And I became a U.S. citizen in May 1966. I was the youngest person in the room. I was sitting there holding my hand up and everything. It was a lot of fun! I had to learn the Constitution, all the Amendments, the Bill of Rights, the whole shot and got quizzed on it and everything. So that was a proud moment I’ll never forget it!

What was that like? Were you nervous or were you more this is a great moment?

I was excited. I don’t get nervous much. It was great! It was fun! So many cool people there.

What was the city where you received your citizenship? Were you in a courthouse?

Detroit. No, it was a government building that had been built like, I don’t know I think Moses’s autograph is on the corner somewhere. I’ll never forget, it was red brick and the bricks were like rough hewn almost. But it had this really like ancient architecture type to it. And we’re all crowded into this room that was only like maybe four times the size of this and there was a hundred plus people in there. And the judge was there and the whole shot. It might have been a courthouse, but I don’t know…

What was a typical weekend like for you growing up in Detroit, what would you do?

During the school year or off the school year? Well during the school year, I was getting my butt kicked at least once a day by the bullies in the school. But, you know, other than that, I had friends and we tried to make the most of it. I’ll never forget, like in third grade, you know back then corporal punishment was allowed in schools. So the students wouldn’t bring an apple for the teacher, they’d bring a paddle that they had made by hand. Sometimes they put holes in it so it moves faster through the air, right. They’d present these to the teachers to get on their good graces. And it was hilarious. Fortunately, I only had my butt paddled at least once in grade school. Some kids were far more incorrigible. Yeah, just going to school, trying to learn things and trying to make friends and having friends and doing things. After school, doing homework took me about 15 minutes. And then, I would go to a friends house or something like that. That was basically it when I was a kid.

Richmond, Virginia

Later on, like when I went to – so I actually left home when I was twelve. I went to go live with my brother in Richmond, Virginia. And I lived there for just under two years. I went to seventh and eighth grade there. And then I came back and finished eight grade in Detroit. Nineth and tenth grade I went to Cranbrook which is a posh private school there. I lived at the school for ninth and tenth grade. So I’ve been away from home since I was twelve. But my parents still lived in the area and I went there. But partied a lot.

Martial Arts and Tennis

When I went to Virginia, I picked up two things: Martial Arts and Tennis from my brother. So I was training like three hours a day for both for a few years. And then, when I went back to Detroit in the eighth grade the bullies didn’t bother me anymore. And then, I was playing tennis and I was in tournaments. And I was in exhibition matches in martial arts around the country and stuff like that. That was fun. And then, yeah, I went to Michigan State.

Fork Union Military Academy

Well, actually, eleventh and twelfth. After the end of tenth grade, I had a conversation with my mom and I was like this ain’t doing it for me. I don’t care how good the school is, I’ve got a, you know, 2.06 average and all I’m doing is I’m playing tennis and I’m fighting and I’m partying. School is not that hard. It is not challenging. So I said, “I need structure in my life.” I didn’t know it at the time, and I didn’t get diagnosed until I was in my 40s, but, you know, I had ADHD. And so, I said, “I need structure. So let’s check out military academies.” So we went to five different military academies that summer and settled on Fork Union MIlitary Academy in Virginia… And so, I went there for two years and excelled like crazy while I was there. It was a blast. I enjoyed it. I’m still in touch with a lot of my friends from there and everything. Some of them have passed, but it’s par for the course.

Michigan State

Then I got accepted to West Point, but Senator Philip Hart passed way. And it’s like well wait a minute, how am I going to get in if I don’t have somebody to sign my letter. The senator signs the letter. So then there were over a 120 other potential students in Michigan that were in the same position. And then a friend of mine told me about Michigan State and I checked that out. And I was like, yeah, okay, I’ll go to Michigan State so I went there…

And your degree from Michigan State was?

Political Science with a minor in Statistics.

And you said your parents, so your parents came to your graduation?

At Fork Union, yeah, and they were hurrying me along. And I was trying to say goodbye to my girlfriend and everything… But yeah, that was probably the happiest moment of my life to that point was graduating. That was quite the achievement.

You mentioned some of your activities like Tennis and Martial Arts… did you pursue these independently?

Yes, independently, absolutely. My whole family didn’t even know about my martial arts. They didn’t even know about it. I would just have my friends, one of the other students their sister was a nurse and she would write a note to my mom or to the school, oh Rupert has a thing to do and he’ll be staying with us. And then I would fly off to Malibu or wherever the exhibition was.

How did it feel for you to make those achievements?

I guess it was exhilarating. If I played bad, because the martial arts it was, I didn’t lose a match. But in tennis, I wasn’t as good in tennis as I was in martial arts. So if I lost a match because of myself, if I lost to myself, it would ruin my entire day. But if I lost and I played my heart out and I played my best, it was glorious, it was glorious.

Tennis Match with Tim Gullikson

My best match in my life was with Tim Gullikson from the Gullikson brothers and I was 16. It was the semi-final of the Somerset Invitational in Troy and I took him to four sets. I actually took a set off of Tim Gullikson, 16 year old kid. And I played, oh my gosh, I made shots that I haven’t made since. At the end of it the crowd was going crazy and I was just like, I was on top of the world! And I was like, you know that was awesome. If I could play like that for the rest of my life, I know I would beat people like him sooner or later. But, yeah, that was fun!

So fast forward, when did you start your first business?

It was in between my sophomore and junior year I went to, I did an internship for the Washingston Center for Learning Alternatives in Washington, DC, and my position was the Assistant Managing Director of Public Affairs for the National Association of Manufacturers. And so, I was in the old exexcutive office building and I was working with the Director of Management of Public Affairs. And so, I was setting up meetings with congressmen, and senators with industry leaders and organizing the whole thing and whatnot. And then, I became friends with a lot of them. And then, I was offered jobs.

Senator Grassley

Senator Grassley offered me a job. I would have been the youngest LA on the hill, legislative assistant, if I had taken it. But I never had a mentor in my whole life. And I was like, oh, wow I have so many job offers and I only have six months left of school. I wonder how many I’m going to get then. But a mentor would have told me, take it. Start working for Chuck Grassley and then finish your school and get your degree from Georgetown not Michigan State. See, but I didn’t have that. So then, I finished school in my junior year. And I only had like five credits left.

George, Moran and Meghnot

And so, I met a guy, this has happened to me twice in my life, where I’m at a bar that I’ve never been to before or since, and I’m sitting next to somebody and they change my life. And so, I met this one guy, he had been doing political consulting for campaigns and things like that. And he wanted to go into public affairs. I wanted to do public affairs because that’s what I was good at. But he convinced me to do political consulting instead. And then him and his silent partner brought me on as an equal partner in the company. And then, I did 16 campaigns and won 15 of them. And then, I walked away from it. Again, I’ve done this twice. And, I walked away from it, and I got a phone call. And the next thing is, what am I going to do with all this money? Yeah, I was 20 years old when I did that and I exited when I was 23.

What was the name of the company?

Oh, it’s real simple: George, Moran and Meghnot. That was our three last names.

I think that’s very impressive.

I don’t know. To me, it’s just part of the journey. But, thank you.

How did you get started in the Technology and Simulation Industry?

So, I applied to the top ten schools in the country, and then five others that I thought were interesting. And I was hoping to get maybe accepted to three, and then I could choose from those three. But then I got accepted to all ten. And I was like that really complicates things. But, the one that really stood out was Rollins College. And when I really started my due diligence and I’m a good researcher. And I did all that. And I was like, wait a minute, why would I go to Harvard or Yale or Michigan or Pennsylvania and get their education when I can go to Orlando and go to Rollins and get all their education.

Rollins College

Because the guy who taught me Finance was – Barrons magazine said he was the Dean of American Finance because he was the Chair of the Harvard Finance Department for 35 years. He taught me Finance. And it’s like I learned Economics from the guy who was on the Board of Economic Advisors. So I’m like, oh, I’m going to go there. And then, they offered me a 50% scholarship based on my past business experience because I was like four years older than the other students that were there and I had more experience. They thought it would add to the classroom discussion and all that.

Merrill Lynch

And so, I came down here and packed up my bags and moved to Beverly Hills so to speak. Came down here, I put everything in a trust with my mother. And just came down here with $400.00 in my pocket and my TV in the back…. I already set up like seven interviews for the day after I arrived. And so, one of them was a woman at Merrill Lynch and she said, “You probably wouldn’t be suitable for us. But, she says, “You need to meet my fiance.” And her fiance was a CEO of an international publishing company. And he and I hit it off. We were like brothers from another mother. And so, he named me a partner in his firm.

Paragon

And so, we did that for a year… We were publishing Star Trek manuals for Paramount and we were doing the comic books for all the Captain D’s restaurants. But in any case, after a year we were working on this one project, and we broke even, and I looked at him and I was like, “Dude, this ain’t cutting it for me.” And he was like, “Yeah, me neither.” So it’s like, I mean, we’re still great friends and we worked together great. But that one project was just fraught with all kinds of issues.

Martin Marietta

So I had done timesharing after I had sold my business in Detroit and I called up one of my clients, I’m still friends with some of my clients from 1986… So I called one of them up and he was living here in Orlando and I said, “I’m looking for work.” And he says, “Do you know anything about project management?” And I was like, and I’m an entrepreneur – I’ll jump off a cliff and build the plane on the way down. So I’m like, “Sure, right. I know.” I barely knew what the two words meant. And so, he says, “Well, let me interview you…” And so, then I interviewed with the VP of the plant, the VP of the plant was equally enthusiastic about me. They didn’t have an employee position for me. I said, “Just hire me. Bring me in as a consultant. You don’t have to worry about benefits or anything like that.”

Project Management

So I started working there on a six month contract… my friend was getting all the part drawings from the engineers on paper. You know, from drafting tables and he had the machine shop and everything. So he was manufacturing, fabricating all the parts and then putting everything together and testing them from radios to missiles. He says, he’s nine months behind schedule.

So I went in there to help get him on track. So three and a half months later I’m sitting in my office and the VP comes in and he says, “Stop what you’re doing…” I’m like, oh crap, I got fired already. Oh, no. He says three and a half months ago you were nine months behind schedule. I said, “Yeah.” He says, “Now the whole plant is one month behind schedule.” Oh, oh, okay. He says, “What am I going to do with you? I don’t want to pay you for three months sitting on your butt.” I said, “I tell you what. You’re going to pay me for one week. And then when I come back from my one week paid vacation, just give me a list.”

Simulation Companies

And I was there for two and a half years and just tackling every department. Just going in there and just reshaping. And doing all the project management and setting up all the processes. And computerizing a lot of things because they didn’t have ten computers in the whole plant. And this was in 1989, ’88. You know, the Economics Department I totally computerized them. And set them all up and did other stuff that was a lot of fun. And then they started giving me projects: DARPA Projects [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency], United Space Alliance and Gulfstream. And all these other things that I’ve done in the past over the next ten years as a consultant. That’s how I got into the simulation area because in 1995, most of my clients were simulation companies, defense related simulation companies. And they got hurt seriously in the 1992 BRACS cutbacks. And so, they were looking for other revenue streams for their technology. And, yeah, that’s how I got into that.

What was the name? There were two companies you named, one was a publishing company.

Paragon

And then after that you started doing the project management for?

Martin Marietta Missile Systems Electronics

You ended up founding Virtual Entrepreneur of Orlando. Was that right after Martin?

No. My time with Martin ended when they offered me a job and I said, “No.” I said there’s no way in hell I’m going to thrive in this environment. I thrive in the environment that I’ve created as a consultant. But I don’t do well with rules and regulations that don’t make sense to me. Kind of like America and the United States today. But in any case, I took a consulting job with a property management company and just shot up through there and after about eight months into it I came up with this idea called VideoSnap.

VideoSnap Invention

And VideoSnap was a holder for remote controls that beeped if you lose it. And so, I designed it and did the injection molds for them. And designed the printed circuit boards. Did the marketing campaign and the fufillment and everything else. That’s when I met Kevin Harrington for the first time. And he had just started his company in Tampa doing promotionals and whatnot. We went up to Great Falls, Montana to shoot it. I’ll never forget that. And everything was great and it was September of ’92 and we did a test. He said, “If you can move 500 of these things in our test, then I’m going to give you a quarter of a million dollars a month in media buy. And you just send us the units packaged and everything. And we’ll pay you 40 percent.” And I’m like, “Good deal!

“My investor wasn’t returning my calls…”

But my investor wasn’t returning my calls all of a sudden. And then, finally three weeks after I’d left like eight or nine calls, he calls me up and says, “That last 50,000 that I promised you is not coming.” And I’m like wait a minute, I’ve had no income for two years. I’m a quarter million in debt not including the half million four fifty that I owe him. I’m living in a $400.00 a month apartment. I’m like what on earth am I going to do? I can’t pay Kevin so I can’t get that off the ground. So I had the rug pulled out from under me. And that really stuck with me and that was my fault. That was my fault because I didn’t, I wasn’t aware that the recession would affect stakeholders like my investor. I should have been aware of that.

Central Florida Council for High Technology Board

So in any case, I took a job with a friend of mine who had a business doing valet services for clubs. And one of the clubs was Rachel’s in Casselberry. And so, I started working there. And then while I’m working there, in the meantime I was on the Board of the Central Florida Council for High Technology. And I was also working with Dr. Judson King, we had started the Florida Venture Group. So between those two things and the job, I was paying my bills.

Change of Focus

But the thing is, a lot of companies were coming to me, a lot of my friends, I was in shock. I went into PTSD. I was like, this is my first big failure and I’m like, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to think. Am I a failure? Is my whole life going to be a failure… My friends would come up to me and they put their arm around me and they said, Rupert, let’s not focus on what you lost, let’s focus on what you gained. And I’m like what? And they said, you came up with an idea. You designed it. You patented it. You made 5,000 of these things. You wrote a business plan and raised half a million bucks…. And they’re like, can you do that for us? Sure!

Virtual Entrepreneur

How much will you pay me? And we negotiated it. And then I started Virtual Entrepreneur the next day. It was September of ’92. It was interesting.

Was it?

Very interesting. I worked on projects, some of them I still can’t talk about. But it was fantastic, yeah! Worked on some, you want to talk about bleeding edge technology, some of these technologies still haven’t come out yet. It was fun. It was a lot of fun. Exciting.

Was that some of the most fun you’ve had?

Yeah, especially, you know, on some of the space stuff and some of the DARPA (DEFENSE ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY) stuff. It was exciting. I had really good people and you know, I earned their trust and their respect. We really worked on things. I planned things out well and all that stuff. And I managed everybody like a servant leader should. We did a lot of fun things.

Speaking of fun, I have a copy of your patent here, for the full motion two seat interactive simulator videogame. This seems like this would be a lot of fun. Do you mind telling us about it? Where you got the idea?

Oh, it was fantastic, yeah!

So in 1995, two of my four, actually three of my five consulting clients were simulation companies. And one of them was specializing in, I won’t say their name, but in any case, they were specializing in motion platforms, you know, to make the whole thing move.

Neighborhood Connection with Madonna

And so, when I was in Detroit, if I’d gone to public school I would have gone to school with Madonna. But we were neighbors, so we knew each other. And one day she called me up and she said, “Hey, there’s this 40 million dollar, I going to this thing in Coconut Grove in three weeks, it’s a 40 million dollar family entertainment center that they’re building. And here’s the name of the CEO. You need to have your thing there.” I’m like okay. So I called him up I said Madonna suggested that I talk to you. We talked back and forth. I sent him some pictures and he said, “Hell, yeah. Gotta have you there.”

Project Management

So this is their simulator. It’s their motion base and we went out, and we went to a junk yard and bought a huey or a belty twelve fuselage and we mounted that fuselage onto their motion base. And I project managed the whole thing. We had a 60 inch TV that we had on a box and everything. And just, got the whole thing up and running. We were using gaming software to play and then we had their motion software to integrate with it. And so, I put the thing on the truck by myself. Drive all the way down to Coconut Grove. Get to the place, find out that the freight elevator is six inches shorter than the simulator. You know what a johnny bar is? Johnny bar is like a six foot tall crow bar that’s about one and three eighths inch thick, and I bent it getting that simulator into the freight elevator.

Miami Dolphins Product Test

And get up there and you want to product test something? You get 52 Miami Dolphins with a keg of beer in each of them into your simulator. And I’m so thankful I had my whole toolbox there. And you know, this lineman, it stops moving and he looks at me and I look at him. He separated the grip from the cyclic joystick. And I’m like, oh, crap. So I had to put it down. I had to repair it. And I had to do like four to five repairs that evening. But it was a huge hit! The CEO loved it. Everybody said it was fantastic! One of the coolest things in the place.

900-Pound Motion Base

And so, when I’m driving back, I was thinking to myself, okay, what did I learn from this? The number one thing I learned is that this company, my client company, was totally incapable of doing what the customer wanted. That motion base that they had, the base itself weighed nine hundred pounds. Just the base itself. And I’m like, that is not a portable system even though I was making it portable. Plus all these other things engineering and design.

Motion Systems for Simulation

So I’m in a bar that I’ve never been in before or since, and the guy sitting next to me, you know, we strike up a conversation… He’s getting his Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering. I said, “What kind?” He said, “I’m interested in motion systems for simulation.” Here my brain goes boom again. So I said, “Can you show me something?” He pulls out his three ring binder from his backpack. And we spent the next hour and a half going through his designs.

Experience and Design

And I’m saying, “Do you mind if I write on these things?” He said, “No.” And I got the pencil and I’m like no, you need to make these legs longer. And I’m giving him, based on my experience the things, the changes he needs to make on his motion systems. And at the end of that, we had designed the system on a napkin. And in 90 days it was running. And I still have it. It’s in my storage unit across town. And when I move into my new house, I have a spot in my new garage that I’m going to set it up and get it running again. But in any case, yeah, that was, man I sold a lot of those things. And then I exited from that company in 2006. That was a lot of fun.

Gaming Industry

But that also got me in the game industry because at one point I got tired of paying Hasbro Interactive and Infogrames like a hundred grand a year just to use their game. It’s like Top Gear how hard could it be? So I studied gaming for about seven months, game development, and then I hired a team of nine developers and we made a big game in eight months. You know, it cost me about 90,000 and I made 2.2 from it. and I said, apparently not that hard at all. And so, yeah, that’s how I got into it. And then, you know, of course, Full Sail and everything else later.

Speaking about the game, in 2014 you created Burnout Game Ventures to invest in local game developers. And then in 2022, you were selected as Synapse Florida Entertainment Innovator of the Year!

Yeah, I beat Full Sail. That was hilarious.

Would you tell us about the success of Orlando based Indie Video Game Publisher / Incubator / Accelerator, Burnout Game Ventures you started?

Well, the bottom line is, so I started it because all my other cohorts in the department, they were using students in a way that I considered, no degregation to them, but kind of like slave labor. And I was like, I didn’t think that was fair. And I thought well, then I started studying the indie game industry, just the game industry in general, but independent gaming in particular. And, you know, they have a 95% failure rate like the regular entrepreneurs do. And so, for pretty much the same reasons. They are all focused on the technical, but they have nothing, you know the gulf between playing a video game and making a video game is just as large as it is between making a video game and being successful as a business making videogames. It’s that big of a gulf.

Revenue Share

So I came up with the idea to basically mentor teams of independent developers through the process of becoming successful entrepreneurs. And I came up with this thing called revenue share which nobody knew about back then. And basically I said, “Okay, you’re going to develop the product. It’s your product, you own it. We’ll take ten percent of your company. But not the IP [Intellectual Property]. That’s yours, you own it.” And then I said, “We’ll teach you marketing and accounting and finance and business development and public relations and human resources and project management, the whole thing. And then, when you graduate, we’ll gleefully kick your butt out the door because you’re growing at 40 percent a year and you can repeat that success.

Advisory Board Second to None

So like for an example, one of my, I had an advisory board that was second to none. You know, it was 50 people. You know, people like Ricardo Sanchez, who is Director of Game Products for Netflix, David Zumwalt who is now the CEO of the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association. And I had 50 people like these guys. And one of them was Robert who lives up in Tavares and he was a producer for the Angry Birds project, one of the Angry Birds projects. And so, we’re having lunch one day, and I was talking about failure rates. You know, things didn’t make sense.

“71 Failures for Rovia Before They Hit It with Angry Birds“

And he says, “Oh, so, how many failures do you think Rovia had before they hit it with Angry Birds?” And I’m thinking after four or five failures, you’re going to get the message somewhere right. You’re going to get the message that something’s not right. And then, hopefully no more than three or four more before you finally, things finally click. He said, “71.” And I said, wait a minute, they put – it’s not a minor task to develop a game. Yeah, there’s people that can do it like the kid from Vietnam that created Flappy Birds. And he did it in like 18 hours and it made you know – but honestly, a video game takes millions of dollars and thousands of man hours of work. In our 700 developer pool we have 37 different job descriptions. So it’s like, that’s a lot. A lot.

Creative Process

And I said, “They went through all that time and money and effort and failed 71 times?” And he said, “Yeah, what’s that tell you?” And I said, “They got lucky on number 72.” Because if you think about it, if you go to the Rovia website today, you’ll see 13 to 15, maybe even 20 or more Angry Birds products, but that’s the only IP. They focused on the product instead of the process to make the product. So that means, yeah, they got lucky on the 72 try. But if I’m an investor in them, I’m going to say two things. Number one, I’m going to say, “Thank you.” I gave you one you gave me six, I’m a happy camper. Number two is: “Let’s do it again.” But they’re literally incapable of duplicating that success with a new IP because they don’t know the process that they used to create it.

22,000 Installs in Five Year Cycle

So I focused on the process. And so, the typical independent game takes two to four years to make. I averagely generate 22,000 installs in a five year sales cycle. 22,000 sales. And they’re out three quarters of a million dollars whether it’s out of pocket or mostly opportunity cost. So we did five products, five companies, five platforms, five different genres of games and we average six months development time. 100,000 installs in the first year for ten percent of that cost.

Burnout Game Ventures

And so, that’s why I created Burnout was to prove processes that I have honed and developed over the past 30-40 years worked. Because once I know the processes work for one thing, they will work for anything. I don’t care if you got a nail salon or you’re 3D printing rocket booster engines. It doesn’t matter. So, obviously there’s some fine tuning that you do to the processes, but the overall processes are all the same. And I’ve used them in I can’t even tell you how many different industries. So, that’s why I created BGV. In fact, I’m taking the site down this week. It’s been up for a few years. And people are still applying to become members and applying to be developers and so forth. I walked away from that and then I got a phone call in January of ’24. And by April I was a happy camper.

What was the phone call?

So I get a lot of phone calls and emails from “Hey, do you want to sell your business…” And I just totally ignore them. But this one for some reason my voice in my head said answer the phone. And I answered it. Three months later I’m sitting at LAX airport signing documents and getting a check. It was interesting… yeah, it was interesting.

Related to what you were talking about, success and numbers, businesses and planning, in 1999, you were quoted in the Orlando Business Journal, they were discussing the I-4 Technology Corridor Intiative and the Central Florida Innovation Corporation and you said, “CFIC may get 600 business plans and assist two or three companies a year. It’s very tough.” And you said, “When we start making billion dollar deals, then we’ll be the Silicon Swamp.” So this year, Florida High Tech Corridor is marking a 30 year milestone, and this week Orlando Inno reported how Parkway Venture Capital outpaced Tech Titans to fund billion-dollar startups from their Winter Park office.

But they’re not here. The startups aren’t here.

Where do you see Central Florida now in 2026 in terms of the High Tech Corridor, investing in startups and that venture capital map?

Wow, that’s a loaded question. Well, so when we were doing CFIC [Central Florida Innovation Corporation] I wasn’t one of the founders. I guess technically I was. But there were two primary founders, Richard Fox and Mike Lucas, Senior. And they were the founders of CFIC. Basically, they came to me and I was running the Central Florida Council for High Technology and back then it was really difficult to create a nonprofit in the state of Florida.

High Tech Council and Central Florida Innovation Corporation

So we basically, they made me a deal and we basically turned, converted the High Tech Council into CFIC. And then, they took off from there. I handled their marketing for the first two years and stuff. In any case, if my memory serves me, by the time 911 hit, Orlando had raised about, I think, 438 million for startups, in venture capital for startups. After 911, we didn’t even break the 400 million dollar mark until ’23. So it took over 20 years, to get back up to that point, or 22. And I was like, that was one of the reasons why I started Orlandopreneur is because I was really frustrated. I’m like, what the heck happened? Why is it taking more than 20 years for Central Florida to get back on it’s feet?

Over 300 Organizations in Central Florida Available to help Entrepreneurs

We have now a 110 billion dollars under deposit in the five county area around Orlando. It’s sitting in banks doing nothing. We have half a million college students that are within a hundred miles here. Some of the best engineers, some of the best coders, some of the best artists. We have over 300 organizations in Central Florida that are available to help entrepreneurs and startups and small businesses. But every time I talk to an entrepreneur I’m like, “Hey, have you heard of OrlandoPreneur?” “What’s that?” “Have you heard of One Million Cups?” “What’s that?” “Have you heard of NAWBO?” “What’s that?” “Have you heard of SCORE?” “What’s that?”

Looking for Capital During Covid

And so, I actually spent some time looking for capital for Burnout Game Ventures during Covid because the industry was going crazy. And normally, I would make a phone call and I would have my money in a week or two. But I spent two years looking for capital in an industry that was bigger than film, TV and music combined. Grew by 20% in one year and I’m having trouble looking for capital? And the reasons why is typically they were investing in people that didn’t know what the hell they were doing. Oh, yeah, they knew how to make games. But they don’t know how to run a business.

“Have any of you run a business?“

You know, when I contacted 22 of the companies that I could find that were looking to raise between two and five million, and these guys: “Oh, I was the lead producer on PubG. My lead artist is the lead artist on Overwatch…” And I’m like, “Yeah, but have any of you run a business?” “No.” “How long is it going to take you? What’s the status of the game?” “Oh, we’re still in the design phase.” “How much are you asking again?” “Well, we have a 12 million dollar valuation.” And I’m like, “When is the product going to be done?” “Four years from now?”

80% of Startups Fail in the First Five Years?

So all 22 of those companies got funded and here we are six years later. How many of them still exist? None. So all of that money that was invested is gone. In fact, 75% of venture capital fails. In addition to the fact that 95% of all startups fail. And I know some people try to distinguish between a startup and founding a small business. But to me, they’re the same. I’m getting into a thing with Pat O’Brien about that. But in any case… first of all in 2020 the groupthink was that 80% of startups fail in the first five years and so forth. Everybody thought that was gospel. Didn’t know why, but they thought it was gospel.

County Occupational Licenses

So I said, where does that come from? Came from the U.S. Department of Labor. So I contacted the researchers. And I said, “So, where did this come from?” And they said, “Oh, we collect that information from occupational licenses.” And I asked, “Is there anyone in your office that has ever run a business?” And they’re like, “No, we’re all government employees.” So when they said it was county occupational licenses, I immediately knew, in statistics we call it spurious information…

Information Poll at OrlandoPreneur

You know, it’s like at the OrlandoPreneur events, we’ll have a 150, 200 people in the room and I’ll say, “How many of you have your own business?” And you know, three quarters of the hands go up. I say, “Keep your hand up if you’ve every filed for an occupational license.” Half the hands come down. I said, “Keep your hand up if the disposition of your company changed and you changed the disposition of your occupational license.” Then all hands come down. So that information is a disaster… So I spent about a few months looking for anything that could give me ideas. Because Forbes and CB Insights and Startup Genome and all these other organizations all around the world, they’re giving these numbers as facts. And I’m like, they got nothing to back it up.

Executive Director of the International Business Innovation Association Interview

So then I see an interview where the Executive Director of the INBIA (International Business Innovation Association) she said, and this is 2020-2021, she said, “95% of the companies that come through the 4300 incubators and accelerators and their association from around the world don’t exist two years later.” Now that 80% in five years to me that’s cotton candy. You can put a whole handful of it in your mouth and it’s gone in a second. No nutritional value. You get a little bit of buz. What she said was filet mignon; that’s straight from the horse’s mouth. That number jives with my experience working with thousands and thousands of startups and entrepreneurs. That information jives more than that.

Five Percent Success Rate

And then I thought to myself, well wait a minute, this table, literally everything you see in this room, the clothes you are wearing, every piece that is part of the vehicle that you drove in here. Everything that you see, feel, and touch in today’s civilization was created by what was once a startup. Apple was a startup. It started in a garage. And I thought wait a minute, every stock in the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ, every single one of those stocks was once a startup. So all the wealth in our entire civilization, is built on that 5% success rate, that 95% failure rate.

“What would happen if we doubled it from Five Percent Success to Ten Percent Success?”

So my first thought aside from my head being blown off, was wait a minute, what would happen if we doubled it from fiver percent success to ten percent success? I know, and you probably know, that money is arithmetic like 1+1 = 2. But innovation, that’s logrithmic. So if we doubled the success rate of startups in the world from 5% to 10%, we would literally double the wealth in the world. And hopefully, know better how to distribute it and what to do with it. But innovation, you know, that would create two more Elon Musks. But, they’ll probably be women. And they’re going to solve other problems: defeat human trafficking or get rid of totalitarianism or cure cancer, whatever, or, get us to Mars in two months instead of two years. So I thought, okay, so how can I be instrumental in that. And that is, and just shortly after that is when that report came out that we passed 400 million and it’s ’22. And I’m like what?

UCF Incubator Meeting

And so I was sitting with one of my best friends VJ and we were at the UCF Incubator on Maguire where we used to have our 1 Million Cups meetings. And he was like, “Rupert… why don’t you do something about it?” And I was still running Burnout at the time. And he said, “What would you do first?” And I said, “Well, the first thing is everybody in this town is siloed. There’s a little cooperation going on between like the gaming community and the simulation community and I’ll credit Kunal Patel with that. He’s the new Director of Innovation for Orange County. And so, the, people are breaking their arms patting themselves on the back for doing a fingernail’s worth of thing.

Innovation

And so I said, “What should we do?” And I said, “Well, the first thing we do is we got to get everybody together from all industries, just get them all together in one room because that’s where innovation comes from. True innovation.” True innovation isn’t oh, I’m going to be the Hertz of nail salons. No. True innovation is coming up with something and applying it in a new way. And so, where did Ray Crock get the idea for the drive through? From his banker. If you don’t know that story look it up. Where did Ford get the idea for the assembly line? From his butcher, well, his VP’s butcher. Again, look it up. Never mind Chrysler was already doing it…

Problems and Processes

When you get people in a room together, they start talking about their problems to one another. And, what happens is, that regardless of whether or not they understand that processes or lack of good processes are the reasons why they’re having these problems, because good processes don’t mitigate problems, they eliminate them completely. Everybody’s focused on mitigating stuff and I’m focused on eliminating stuff. And so it’s like when they get together and a person says, “I have this HR problem.” And a person in a totally way out in left field company says, “I had the same problem. This is how I dealt with it.” Bing, the light goes off. Let me try that. And it works.

OrlandoPreneur

So it was December 5 of ’22 when we set up a meetup page…. I said, “We’re going to call it OrlandoPreneur because we’re not limiting it to tech… I’ve been doing the tech thing for 40 years. Let’s kick it up a notch. Let’s help everybody.” So I said, “Let’s call it OrlandoPrenuer.” So on December 5 we started the Meetup page and we did two posts on LinkedIn over the course of two weeks and two posts on Facebook. That’s what I recall. And we got Gatlin Hall Brewing. We show up… We had 306 RSVP’s in two weeks from four posts. And we had 207 people show up.

Dennis Pape From Seedfunders

So Dennis Pape from Seedfunders he got up there and did a presentation on Venture Capital in Central Florida. Ken Hall from DeepWork Capital was there. We had all the angel groups and venture capital groups were there. All the top entreprenuers were there, they were successful and on their way to it. You know, it was a who’s who and it was wildly successful. And at the end of the evening, I’m looking at VJ and I said, “Look, I’m already burned out from Burnout and now what are you getting me into here?” And people who couldn’t come were like, “When is the next one?” That’s what everybody was saying that came and that didn’t.

38th Event at Blue Martini on I-Drive

So I said, “Okay, I’m going to take January off and plan this out.” So I wrote the business plan and everything in January. And said, “Okay, our next event is February.” And I picked the third Monday of the month because it’s a Monday night. Everybody else is scheduling their events for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I don’t want to compete with that. I don’t want them to go through too much traffic. You got to look at the whole picture. So I picked the third Monday of the month. And so, now we’ve had, we just had our 38th event at the Blue Martini at I-Drive. And our average, it’s gone down a little bit, we’re averaging I think a 143 people per event. We’re averaging 209-210 RSVP’s.

Meetup KPI’s

But what really gets me, is- that’s all fine and dandy because I did huge events because for the Cancer Society and all these other things over the years. 500 1 Million Cups and what not. But what really gets me is, I was going over the numbers one day and, this was about a year ago, and so, Meetup, people review you on nine different KPI’s. You know, I felt welcome. Welcoming host. Started on time. Diverse group. I felt safe. Inclusive group and so forth. But one of them was: Made an Impact… I’m looking at all the numbers and I’m crunching them all and everything. And I’m looking at our made an impact number which was our lowest number...

5.1 Percent Median

So I contacted Meetup and I said, “I don’t need to know the numbers, names or things like that, but could you just give me what the average is across the Meetups? What the median is?” And so, when they sent it back to me, we’re well above the average and the median on all things. But Making an Impact, so you’re talking 20,000 Meetups around the world with millions of Meetups that have gone on. And their median, obviously the average is going to be much higher because it’s skewed by groups like mine. But the median was 5.1 percent. And I’m fretting over 57 % which is 11 times their median and I’m like holy crap.

$200,000 Dollars in Business

Monday night I had a guy come up to me and we’re having a cigar afterwards and he’s like, “I wanted to thank you.” And I said, “What?” He said, “I’ve been coming here for four months and I’ve done over $200,000 in business from the people that I met here. Either directly or indirectly. I think, mostly indirectly. But if I didn’t come here I wouldn’t have had that business.” And I’m like, “Oh, you’re welcome. Where’s my 5%?”

For someone coming how would they benefit? You just gave an example of someone working business to business… Is it an opportunity to meet other entrepreneurs?

Yeah, like minded people. It’s a tribe. You can go there and you can feel comfortable and you can meet other people and you can form relationships. Form relationships, develop them, cultivate them and foster them and so forth. And, you know, it’s not just doing business and all that. I’ve had five or six companies started from people who met at OrlandoPreneur. Joint ventures were created. Partnerships were created. I’ve created a number of partnerships for OrlandoPrenur because of it. And, I don’t know anything about relationships because that’s not what we focus on.

Startup Failure

And then of course, every single event we ever do has a learning component in it. Because after Burnout when I had that epiphany from hearing that information, you know, I thought to myself, wait a minute, what is the cause? And, you know, CB Insights well, these are the top ten or top twenty reasons why startups fail. And I’m like, you can say they’re the top twenty reasons they gave for their failure. But there’s only one cause and there always ever will be one cause, and that’s us. The entreprenuer, the founders, they are the cause of all startup failure. All of it. Even when I had the rug pulled out from me in the recession, I was the cause of our failure because I didn’t see that coming and I didn’t prepare for it in a suitable manner.

Right Mindset

And so, I started digging deeper into that. I’m like well wait a minute, so if we’re the cause, what’s causing us to cause? Why are we failing at a 95% rate? And so, I boiled it down to, the first thing is we don’t have the right mindset. I can’t tell you how many entreprenurs present at 1 Million Cups and whatnot and they’re so unrealistic in their goals and what they think they can achieve. And, you know, I tell them that afterwards… You’re not going to change the world if you’re only going to work 30 hours a week on it, number one. Even if you’re working smart. I don’t care what all these idiots on Facebook and whatnot say. You’re not going to do it. So you have to have the right mindset. It’s a lot more than just growth and fixed. It’s a lot of other things: High levels of initiative, resilence, risk tolerance, and innovation.

Orange County Library

So that right there, if you don’t have the right mindset, what’s going to happen is you don’t self educate. That’s why they all ask me, when I asked them if they’ve heard of these 300 offerings – they got open arms, they got open doors and most of them, are free. And if you fail because you didn’t utilize, you didn’t come to the Orange County Library and learn about all the things you could have learned about how to be successful in business and then you fail. You have no one else to blame. You want to blame somebody, look in the mirror. I’m sorry. I’m not sorry. That’s all there is to it.

Sufficent Plan

So that lack of self education leads to… insufficient planning. A sufficient plan is one that gets you to achieve your goals. That’s it. You don’t have to change the world. You don’t have to do anything. If you want to change the world it ain’t going to happen next month, next year. It probably won’t happen in five or ten years. Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk will tell you the same thing. So it’s like, I’m adding a fourth one which is the execution of that plan. If you don’t execute that plan, if you don’t follow it through, then you’re going to fail. So those, that waterfall of things that we’re lacking as founders is causing us to fail at a 95% rate. And so, OrlandoPrenuer I’m taking all the stuff that I’ve developed over the last decades of work. My hair used to be really black and now it’s not. It’s like gray. You got my headshot? There was a picture of you, they celebrated your 41st birthday in American City Business Journal. Oh, my gosh, I’m afraid to look. Oh, yeah, that’s my headshot. That was Brian Price. He’s our photographer for OrlandoPrenuer and he took that headshot…

Five Things

We have these five things that as an entrepreur we need to do for ourselves. Let alone for the people that we want to impact: the stakeholders like our employees and our investors and our customers, you know our families and everybody else. If we don’t do these five things, we’re not going to be successful. If you’re successful not doing those five things, you’re just lucky. And what really gets my goat is when somebody is lucky once or twice and now they think they’re an expert entrepreneur. And they’re giving other entreprenuers advice. And they’re still not moving the needle. I’ve had some interesting conversations with some very well known entreprenuers about this and I’m like, oh yeah, you’re right. You’re not going to change your philosophy or the way you do things are you? Obviously not because you’re making plenty of money. Well, you’re an entreprenuer.

Double the Success Rate

My mission is to double that success rate. Obviously, with OrlandoPrenuer if I’m doing 10% success rate, hell UCF is one of the best, the UCF Business Incubation program is one of the best in the world and they’ve got a 10 percent success rate. Y Combinator they fluctuate between 12% and 21% since they started. Last year they were 18%, but look at what they got to work with. Of course, they’re the best in the world because less than .02 percent of the companies that apply to get into Y Combinator get in. And again 18 percent means they have an 82 percent failure rate at Y Combinator.

Risks in Starting a Business

It’s like people, they don’t do their homework. They don’t understand what they’re getting into and it breaks my heart when they fail. And then they go into foreclosure and they get a divorce and they lose the custody of their kids and they commit suicide and whatever. And I’ve seen it happen on my watch and it hurts. These are my brothers and sisters. Technically, they’re my cousins. When you’re starting a business do you really understand the risks that you’re putting you and all the stakeholders and your family through? I don’t want you to go through those risks. I don’t want you to have 71 failures before you hit it big.

Orlando’s Financial Resources

To me success is, I’m happy as the founder, my employees are happy and my investors are happy. That’s what success is. Not everything needs to be a unicorn. And see, that’s the biggest problem with what’s going on in Orlando and pretty much everywhere else that I’ve been to. You know, I visit other cities and I meet with their economic development people and so forth and they’re all the same. They’re all trying to adopt the Silicon Valley model. And I’m sorry, you cannot be successful with the Silicon Valley model in any place except Silicon Valley because you don’t have the resources including human resources. We have the financial resouces here in Orlando, absolutely 100 percent. But we don’t have any leadership in Orlando.

Foundations

Detroit has the Ford Foundation and Miami has the Knight Foundation. Tampa has Jeff Bennett. But who do we have? Nobody. We’ve got people who have gone into space, and they’re building a 40 million dollar mansion in Winter Park. Are they stepping up? No. Not that I’m calling them out. But the thing is, we don’t have leadership in this town to focus on the things that are more important. When the Orlando Economic Partnership was created, they had in their clauses, supporting startups and small businesses. And I’m like, we’ve been the redheaded step child ever since. And I’m not saying that they haven’t helped. It’s just that it’s not their focus. Everybody’s focused on the big dollars and the big things.

Space Florida

It’s like Space Florida. They’re doing fantastic things, right. It’s just that they’re giving $320 million dollar concessions to these companies, that are creating a 1,000 jobs. And I’m like, if I had $320 million dollars, I’m going to create a hundred times that many jobs even with the failure rate, even with a 50 percent failure rate. And so, that’s what OrlandoPreneur wants to do. Once we set up our educational programs and our funding programs, I want to have at worst a 50 percent failure rate. Because if I’m doing 10 percent, nobody’s going to care. That’s not going to move the needle. But if we’re doing 50 percent success rates, then every city in the world’s going to want to have OrlandoPreneur. And so, that’s my goal. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

You mentioned 1 Million Cups and that’s a national entreprenuer organization. You were recognized nationally. The headline was: “Meet the Man who attended 500 1 Million Cups Events”. So congratulations to you on your milestone!

Thank you.

What is it like to be a community organizer for 1 Million Cups and what do entereprenuers get out of the meeting?

So as I alluded to earlier, if you’re an entrepreneur, you have a high tendency to not have the right mindset. To not self educate. To not plan sufficently. And to not execute. Then how do you fix that? One of the reasons why 1 Million Cups is such a successful program and why OrlandoPrenuer is doing so well, is because there’s no better education, than from other entrepreneurs. Just none better. No offense to the Library, there’s none better. But at the Library you’ve got all the autobiographies and all these other things from all these other successful entrepreneurs and you can read about those things.

Founding of 1 Million Cups

But the thing is, meeting them face to face and commiserating and learning from each other is how you fulfill those four pillars of successful entrepreneurship. So 1 Million Cups, I didn’t go to the first one because I was out of town. Danya Shea and Ron Ben-Zeev brought it here a year after it started in Kansas City. So it was founded by the Ewing Marion Kaufman Foundation. You know, he was the owner of the Kansas City Royals. And pre-Covid, they had a 185 locations. Now, I think it’s like a 130 or so.

1 Million Cups Education Program

And what it is, is it’s an opportunity for anybody who is starting a business, already has a business, wants to start a business. I can’t think of a better education program than this. And it’s brainless. It’s a Wednesday morning, if you’re an entrepreneur what are you doing Wednesday morning? So, take the time. Trust me. It’s a ridiculously valuable use of your time on a Wednesday morning.

Solai Coffee and Donut Central

You get free coffee and I make sure it’s the best coffee in town from Solai Coffee, Kenyan Solai Coffee. You get free donuts and again, I made sure it’s the best donuts from Donut Central. You know it’s a free event and we have anywhere between 15 and a hundred people that show up. We’re averaging about 35 right now. And these are people like me. I’m not the only one in the world that has 40 years of experience as an entrepreneur. In our audience, there’s 10, 15 of those people.

Videos of Entrepreneurs

And so, I tell people it’s an education program. I said, “Every Wednesday morning we have two entreprenuers come.” And you’re on the board too, you’re on the committee. I said, “Every Wednesday morning, two entrepreneurs come in and educate us for six minutes on the business idea. And then we educate them for 20. And the beauty of it is, not only what you learn at that event, but for the enterpreneur and for anybody else, you can go to the website or to the YouTube channel and we have hundreds of these videos of entrepreneurs presenting their business idea and getting feedback.

Learning from other Entrepreneurs Face to Face

So it’s the best use of your time if you’re an entrepreneur. From an entrepreneur who’s had multiple exits in multiple industries, who’s changed industries, who’s had failures, whose had you know, all that stuff. I’m telling you, there’s no better education than learning from other entrepreneurs. And if you can do it face to face all the better. And that’s a weekly thing. OrlandoPrenuer is a monthly thing. So, yeah, it’s a labor of love. 500, I can’t believe it. Over 500 times I’ve gotten up earlier than usual on a Wednesday morning and gone down there. And typically gotten there much earlier so I could set up the coffee and set up everything else. It’s been interesting.

So it’s been quite an investment.

Yeah. I can’t even think about how much money I’ve, you know, my opportunity cost.

You did mention Space Florida. And the current President and CEO of Space Florida Rob Long said, “Florida has built one of the world’s strongest and most investable space innovation ecosystems.”

100 percent!

What do you see as the future of our region in terms of startups and innovation?

Well, in space obviously we’re going to be the unquestionable leader in space within five to ten years if we aren’t already. We should be. My goal is for OrlandoPreneur to help Orlando or Central Florida to become the model from which all other cities should emulate. And we have the ability. I know Barron’s or was it Bloomberg’s: Is this the new Silicon Valley? I don’t know of anybody with much intelligence that would say, yeah, we’re going to be the next Silicon Valley. No. Silicon Valley is, it’s like Silicon Valley is God and we’re the ant. There’s no comparison. They do trillions of dollars in venture capital. We’re lucky to do 300 million or 250 million. Not only that, but look at what’s going on in Silicon Valley now socially and San Francisco. I don’t want that for Orlando and I don’t know anybody who wants that for Orlando.

Startup Culture

What we have to do is we have to create our own startup culture that learns from Silicon Valley what we need to learn. Puts it into proper perspective and then develops their own culture. So like when I’m a mentor for Startup Weekend or anything like that. I tell them I said, I need to be the first mentor in there. And so, when I get in there I tell them, don’t take our word for it. We’re here to provide you with mentorship and advice based on our experience. My experience is not his or her or anybody else’s experience. It’s from my experience.

Different Viewpoints

So your job as a leader is to get as many different viewpoints as you can from trusted people and respected people that you can. But then you pick and choose the things that you like that you feel you want to use. And build and create that culture around and then run with that. That’s what Orlando needs to do. It needs to behave like a startup in order to be a successful startup generator. It needs to think like a startup. We don’t have that in the mayor’s office. It’s better in the county mayor’s office.

Millionaires in Central Florida

Startups and small businesses, it’s like people don’t care about us. And it’s like our whole civilization is dependent on our being successful and nobody cares. And it drives me crazy. I want to change that. For Orlando to get to where they need to go, number one they need leadership. Somebody with means. A Vinik, a Knight or a Ford, somebody like that. And they are here in Orlando. There’s multiple of these people here in Orlando. According to the IRS, there’s 77,000 people in the five county area that have over a million dollars liquid. And whenever I talk to any one of those people, they go that’s low. So we have the people with the money. And we have the entrepreneurs with the money. But nobody’s stepping up…

Leadership

We need leadership from the mayor’s office, from the county mayors’s office, from the legislature… Yeah, our government needs to be involved: Our city, county, local, national, state. They all need to be involved in a coordinated effort to help startups. Help startups in those four pillars. So even a tiny little boost from each one of those entities, it’s going to have a tremendous effect. If they set aside, let’s say they gave Orlandoprenuer a grant for say, ten million dollars.

Job Creation

We’re going to create a thousand jobs easy. Easy, with our eyes closed. And at least 30-50 companies that are going to be successful, potential unicorns. Not that, that’s the intention. Because, I mean, when you walk down Park Avenue or you walk down Orange Avenue, maybe not so much Orange Avenue. Don’t even get me started on that. But, you know, small businesses. Where do you go to eat? The best restaurants aren’t the chain restaurants. They’re owned by local entrepreneurs. They might have four or five restaurants, but they’re all different. And they use the same processes in one restaurant as they do in the other and that’s all well and good. And it’s like, we need that leadership.

Stronger Collaboration

We need much stronger collaboration. Honestly, I know how to spell the word. I’m the Chief Collaboration Officer for OrlandoPrenuer, that’s my title aside from Founder. And it’s like we really need to collaborate. When I say collaborate, I mean if the simulation industry really wants to collaborate and benefit in a major way, a major way with the game industry, they need to put eight, nine figures into it. And they’ll get, five, ten times back. Any good collaboration generates a five to ten X return for the parties involved. And we invite all of them to partner with us. Does that answer your question?

Yes, you outlined what you think needs to be done in terms of succeeding in the future.

Right.

You know, there’s a lot more we could talk about, there’s so much… Your work is key because it spans a critical period in this area. In other words, we have the early infrastructure from the military when you came Martin Marietta was already here. NASA was here. So we have that whole infrastructure that was in place. You kind of represent that transition in the history of our community, in terms of gaming. Gaming came in as entertainment. You worked in the military side with high tech, but then you also worked in the entertainment side with gaming and you have been a part of the community in many different ways in terms of working in leadership capacities for business development, economic development. But then also as you mentioned the Cancer Society, other leadership roles for the good of the community…

Honestly, if you’re not helping others, what good are you?

I understand that you’re building a new home in Orlando, so we can anticipate that your legacy in our area will continue, right? You mentioned visiting other places to work on their economic development. But the fact that you’re building a home in Orlando I hope that means you’re going to live in the home.

I designed it and built it to be my fortress of solitude.

What do you enjoy most about living in the City Beautiful? Because, you know, you could live anywhere, but you’ve chosen this area to build your home. So what do you enjoy about it?

It’s not the driving. Because the traffic is just – I am an auto enthusiast. I love driving. And I could spend hours talking about cars and the industry and racing. It’s just – law enforcement, for example. I love our law enforcement. I support them wholeheartedly! I give to PAL and all the other things. I’m not even going into ICE. It’s like why are they pulling over people that are speeding when they could stand on a street corner. I sat while I’m waiting at the light on the way here, I sat at the light on the corner of 17-92 and Fairbanks and out of 26 cars that were turning right, only one of them came to a complete stop on the red light. That’s 25 $265.00 dollar tickets that could have been written to generate revenues for our legal system that nobody’s collecting…

Opportunity in Orlando

In any case, I’m not a fan of the driving. So what keeps me here? So Dave Vance started Orlando Life, I don’t know how many years ago. Ten years ago I think it was. And so, I was one of the first people that he interviewed. And at the time, he was interviewing expats. You know, people that came from other states and moved here and why are we still here? And my answer was opportunity. And it is still my answer. It’s like opportunity. No matter how I look at it, Orlando has the most fertile soil to do pretty much anything anybody wants to do.

Twelve Different Tech Sectors in Orlando

You want to start an aerospace accelerator? Orlando’s the place to do it. You want to start a nail salon? Orlando’s the place to do it. You want to start a hospitality accelerator? Orlando’s the place to do it. You want to start an entertainment tech company? Orlando. Health tech company? Fintech company? Any kind of tech company. We’ve got twelve different tech sectors the world comes to here for. People don’t know that. Anything you want to do you can do in Orlando.

Orlando as Test Market for the World

It’s crazy. It’s like in 1992 when I was working on the video snap thing, you know I was doing research on where am I going to test it and everything else. And the whole world was testing their products in Orlando at the time because it’s the melting pot of humanity. So when you do statistical testing and research on the population in Orlando, you get numbers that are just dead reliable. Just dead reliable. It’s like, so all the agencies, all the advertising in New York and whatnot, in London, and Munich, all the advertising agencies do all their testing here in Orlando.

Opportunist

And it’s like, opportunity. And to me, that’s what drives me, I’m an opportunist in everything that I do. There’s so much here. But, again, the lack of leadership is really hurting. So that’s what keeps me here, that’s why I love it.

Things to Do!

Oh, and the things to do! Last night I met a young lady and we’re having a long discussion and she had just moved here. I said, “Just the outdoor stuff.” This morning I was meeting with one of my people, and I told her, she’s from outside and I told her, “The state of Florida has one third of the fresh water in the world.” It’s in our aquifer. I mean, obviously, Lake Superior is one third of the fresh water in the world that you can swim in. And there’s a thousand springs, fresh water springs in Florida. I said, “When I first came down here in ’86, every weekend, I’m going out to a new spring and I’m taking my friends with me and we’re having a blast!” And we’re exploring and we’re driving through these nice roads and everything, and just having a blast! And, you know, there’s that.

Canaveral National Seashore

Canaveral National Seashore is one of my favorite places in the world. The beach there, Playalinda, I know it gets a bad rap because of you know towards the top of it. You’ve got to walk five miles to get to it where they have the clothing optional. But the thing is, is the rest of it is right there. Where else in the world can you swim in the most beautiful beach, the most beautiful water, and see 300 foot tall rocket ships a mile away. Just right there. Where else in the world can you see that? And what is it, 374 species of bird are out there?

Florida Man

Never mind the gators. Everybody’s so afraid of gators. You don’t know anything about gators, trust me. They’re more afraid of us than we are of them. OMGITSWICKS. That guy cracks me up. “What’s going on here?” You’ve seen those videos, right? Where the guy goes: “Oh, glad I got it on my flip phone.” Yeah, Florida Man and all this other stuff that we’re reliable for, but we’re not the only ones. That’s all over the country. But I take it with a grain of salt. I think it’s kind of funny.

Infrastructure

But, yeah, so the nature stuff, the opportunity, just the infrastructure here is very good even though traffic sucks. Other than that, you know highways are smooth. You know, you hardly see a pothole. Some of them I could mention desperately need to be repaved.

Rail System

But overall it’s, you know they have a good rail system now with Sun Rail and Brightline. I don’t call it Brightline high speed rail, please don’t even go there. But then again we have to change the way we do things. We haven’t learned from the people that do it better. You want high speed rail, look at Japan, look at Europe, look at China. They do it right. So how do we do it right? Well, we got to spend money. You have to spend two to three times more to do a high speed rail. You know, if you’re going to spend two and a half billion, no you got to spend seven and a half to ten billion. But, you’ll get better returns doing that than you would doing two and a half billion going 85 miles per hour. Would you call that a scarcity mentality in government? But then everybody’s taking advantage of government, too. And then DOGE comes in and goes totaling off in left field.

So when’s the next meetup for OrlandoPreneur? You said it is once a month?

Yeah, third Monday of the month from 5:30 to 8:00 PM.

And there’s a website that people can just sign up?

Yeah, it’s at meetup.com/orlandopreneur and we have a website, just look up Orlandopreneur.com We’re getting ready to release a new website: https://www.preneursuccess.com/orlandopreneur and an app and all our educational curriculum. And other things soon. We’re all working really hard.

We look forward to hearing more about that.

Yeah, me too.

Thank you very much for sharing your valuable time with us today and for the intrinsic contributions you’ve made to the economic development of Central Florida.

The pleasure was all mine. Thank you.

​Interviewee: Rupert Meghnot

Interviewer: Jane Tracy

Date: January 22, 2026

Place: Orlando Public Library

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