Video Express Viewer

Innovators are entrepreneurs that find the way to create their vision. Episode 7 continues the journey of John F Cruz in the Spirit of Innovation.

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, UNITED STATES, May 25, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ -- Innovators are entrepreneurs that find the way to create their vision. These paths don’t exist or the product/service would already exist. So innovators must pave their own road. Most often it is not about riches, but the vision. Financial security is considered the byproduct of reaching the vision.

The year was 1993. John F Cruz walked away from the State government work after successfully performing on his government contracts. But he lost out on millions. The human factor was a big awakening. Designing products wasn’t hard for Cruz, it was the unpredictable administrative people involved taking personal advantage of the money involved. It was his first lesson in Episode 4, working for Norand on the Pizza Hut project in Episode 4. This time would be different.

When one door closes another will open for Cruz. And this time was no exception. Cruz caught his next vision when his old University classmate showed him a small video playing on a PC, something he never seen before. Cruz restructured his life around that single moment. He learned the Windows operating system, refreshed his knowledge in Advance Basic programming language and studied the hidden program libraries inside the Windows operating system.

Cruz then wrote new code that played these very small videos in smooth natural motion, full screen on standard Windows 95/NT PCs, a feature not commonly seen in the public. He published his first Windows 95 product, a full screen video screen saver in Egghead stores nationwide. Then Cruz collaborated with Discovery Channel on a specialized video screen saver. His efforts caught the attention of investors and his company ImageMind became a corporation. It was the next level.

Now it was time for a new product. Cruz programmed a new media player utilizing his full screen video software. It had enhanced video playback features not yet seen by the public and much more enhanced over the basic Media Player that came in Windows. Cruz called it Video Express Viewer.

With the investment, Cruz expanded his office space and hired two programmers, contracted an accounting firm and a contract graphic designer for the visual look of Video Express Viewer. Cruz now needed to learn how to run a corporation with legal requirements, a board of Directors and a Shareholders Board.

Cruz could step out of his role as programmer and focus on product design and product market positioning. His new programmers were much more talented but would collaborate with Cruz nevertheless to fulfill the features he demanded in the product. Cruz wanted Video Express Viewer not only filled with superior functionality, but visually fun to use. The enhanced version resembled a TV remote control with animated button selections, sound effects, privacy passwords, resizing video on the fly and more.

Cruz also wanted a special eye-catching retail box and hired a talented graphics artist. He wanted customers to immediately see the function of the product on the retail box. In a lunch meeting with the graphics artist at Market Street Grill, downtown Salt Lake City, Cruz sketched out his retail box vision on a napkin. The graphic artist delivered a beautiful retail box which included a photo of Cruz’s PC monitor to honor Cruz’s vision.

Cruz knew Video Express Viewer would expand the excitement of watching multimedia on Windows 95 personal computers. So he negotiated with Discovery Channel to include their promotional video clips in a multimedia library included on the Video Express Viewer installation CD-ROM.

Cruz then hired a public relations company. Video Express Viewer was launched into the market. Most all national trade magazines printed stories about Video Express Viewer. Example articles can be seen at www.ImageMind.com. Various TV stations did tech reports also covering the product. These included Fox and CNET.

A free limited version of Video Express Viewer was made available on download servers which often crashed from the high-volume customer downloads. Soon Video Express Viewer was on shelves in various retail stores next to John’s video screen saver and Discovery Channel software product.

Cruz had paved his own path this time. And this time, everything was unfolding as planned.

Benton
ImageMind
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