The Business Journal recently caught up with Victor Tsao, who splits his time between Asia and Orange County.
The entrepreneur, who keeps a low profile when he’s in town, opened up a bit for this column, weighing in on the global economy, among other musings.
“The equity markets are still going strong since 2009,” he wrote in an email. “We are working hard. Retirement is not in sight yet.”
Tsao and wife, Janie, are one of OC’s most powerful business couples.
They run Miven Venture Partners in Newport Beach and ranked No. 21 on the Business Journal’s recently published annual OC’s Wealthiest special report with a nest egg of about $850 million. Most of their wealth derives from the 2003 sale of home-networking group Linksys Group Inc. to Cisco Systems Inc. for $500 million. They built the company into a major global player that helped usher in the era of affordable home networking.
Cisco sold the Irvine-based Linksys operations in 2013 to Belkin International Inc. in Playa Vista on undisclosed terms, though it was expected to bring in far less than its original sale.
Victor is big on mentoring entrepreneurs in the U.S. and China, where the Tsaos were born. He’s taken a deep dive into the arts recently, he told the Business Journal.
“I do spend a good portion of my time on various culture, history, and art learning projects,” he said. “Still lots to learn.”
Janie also heads the Tsao Family Foundation in Corona del Mar.
The couple behind the first wireless router were enshrined in the Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame in 2014.
New Fire in Hearthstone
Irvine-based Blizzard Entertainment Inc. has rolled out an expansion pack for its popular collectible digital card game “Hearthstone.”
The company has added 135 cards for “Knights of the Frozen Throne,” where players will travel to Northrend to meet their ends, then be resurrected by the villain Lich King and granted new powers, including the ability to transform into Death Knights.
The free-to-play game played a key role in boosting Blizzard’s average online monthly active user base to a record 46 million players in the second quarter, up 36% from the same period a year ago.
“Hearthstone” has amassed more than 70 million players since its March 2014 launch in the U.S., a staggering increase that may help it claim the title as the most actively played Blizzard game in the company’s 23-year history.
Players from around the world are throwing down real money to improve performance and gain special card sets.
The game was last estimated to bring in about $40 million per quarter through purchases of the sets and of accessories that boost performance. The analyst forecast was provided in late 2015 when the game had about 30 million active players.
It’s not a far stretch to estimate that the digital card game, now available on Windows and Mac PCs; Windows, iOS and Android tablets; and smartphones, could generate as much as $200 million annually.
Kingston’s Cybersecurity
Fountain Valley-based Kingston Technology Inc. has released two smaller USB flash drives in an effort to help businesses limit the amount of data transferred outside its network.
The four-gigabyte and eight-gigabyte DataTraveler 2000 devices are protected with 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard hardware and don’t need software or hardware drivers.
It acquired the IronKey brand encryption technology last year for $4.2 million from Imation Corp. in Minnesota, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The 4GB version costs about $60, and the 8GB sells for $136.
Kingston’s line of DataTraveler 2000 products feature an alphanumeric keypad that allows users to lock the drive with a word or number combination. A full-drive reset deletes existing data and requires a new password after 10 invalid login attempts. For additional security an auto-lock feature is activated when the drive is removed from the host device, even if not properly shut down.
The safeguards are designed to mitigate lapses in cybersecurity, making it more difficult for large amounts of sensitive data to be transferred to unauthorized parties if the drive is lost or stolen, according to Ken Campbell, Kingston’s encrypted USB business manager (see Tech & Cybersecurity Special Report, page 13).
“The less data that can be copied, the less that can be leaked,” he said in a released statement.
The USB drives are designed for global security IT professionals, small- to medium-sized businesses and corporate users that require data protection.
Kingston is the world’s largest seller of consumer USBs and one of the largest privately held companies in Orange County, with an estimated $6.6 billion in sales last year.
Bits & Pieces
Gold Mining USA Inc., an Over-the-Counter penny stock, acquired MR Processing, an Irvine-based company that develops algorithms and applications that categorize, analyze and augment digital content. Its first app, VITA, makes it easier to illustrate, record and share events. … Irvine-based Vizio Inc., which perennially battles Samsung as the top U.S. seller of smart TVs, has added Google Play Movies & TV to its product line, allowing users to access tens of thousands of new-release movies and next day TV shows. Vizio, which was co-founded in 2002 by William Wang, is the fifth largest private company based in Orange County, with an estimated $3.5 billion in 2016 sales. The vast majority of its revenue is generated from its suite of smart TVs.
