My friend George Browning and I left school together to start Alien Skin Software. When I figured out that I wanted to make bug free finished tools, it was an easy decision to move into commercial software. I enjoyed computer graphics research, but I didn’t like the unfinished state of most software created in academia. What was that situation like? How did you make the decision to jump ship? You dropped out of computer science graduate school to start the company. I love our calm efficiency and would not trade it for extra excitement. Now we coordinate our efforts and get much more done in less time.
These days we don’t experience quite as much novelty, but there is always something new to learn. On the negative side, we worked very long hours and there was a lot of chaos. The early years were exciting because I was experiencing completely new things like travel, leading a team, and handling what, to me, were large amounts of money. What’s your evolution been like with the company? Another difference is that we have been around for 17 years. As a result, we deal with some old fashioned issues like piracy, resellers, and physical disks. Unlike many of the other companies highlighted here, our software is on the desktop rather than on a web server. Our strength is making research level image processing easy to use. Most of our photography plug-ins are more practical tools for things like resizing, but there are some cool photo effects too, such as film simulation and oil painting. Our graphic design plug-ins tend to be glitzy effects like fire and lightning. We make Photoshop plug-ins for photography and graphic design. This is part of our “Bootstrapped, Profitable, & Proud” series which profiles companies that have $1MM+ in revenues, didn’t take VC, and are profitable. This is a Q&A with Jeff Butterworth (pictured below), Queen Bee (CEO when speaking to suits) of Alien Skin Software.
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