Osman Kent
CEO, Songphonic Records
Osman Kent's impressive entrepreneurial career in technology businesses during the
past twenty years is an unsung British success story, mainly due to his desire to
remain private.
As the founder and CEO of 3Dlabs - at one time one of the fastest growing
companies in Silicon Valley, whose products were used in the making of films like
Titanic and The Matrix - Osman pioneered and revolutionised 3D computer graphics
on the PC.
Since 2004 he has embarked on a mission in music with the birth of Songphonic
Records, fulfilling a life long ambition after an intermission of thirty years.
Osman was recently elected to become a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in the
UK and is a Barker for the Variety Club of Britain.
Early Years
Born in Turkey in 1958, Osman's strongest childhood memory was playing the piano
spontaneously at the age of six during a visit to relatives - his first encounter with the
instrument. A year later his parents, who were of modest means, had saved up to
buy him a second-hand piano and invested in lessons, starting a lifelong love affair
with music.
Despite being dubbed a child prodigy in both music and sciences, Osman's parents
insisted that he receive a regular school education, resisting attempts to place him at
a school for gifted children. By the age of 14, Osman harboured dreams of becoming
a force in music, sometimes pretending to be Cat Stevens at gigs or when performing
his own compositions at school concerts.
In the summer of 1974 a three month hands-on survey of pianos in Brighton pubs
convinced Osman that his future was indeed in music and he made plans to return to
England to study music. Sadly, these plans weren't shared by his parents who
cunningly bought him a second hand computer hoping that it would distract him from
the seductive lure of music. The strategy worked and it wasn't long before Osman
was hooked on computers and programming.
At 18, Osman graduated from high-school with top science marks and won a coveted
place at Istanbul Technical University to study aeronautical engineering. Still, his
passion for music led him back to England hoping to study composition at the Royal
Academy of Music. Alas, with his parents' strong encouragement (not to mention
control of funds) to study 'something proper', after only a year, Osman enrolled at the
University of Birmingham for a double degree in Computer Science and Electronics
Engineering, where he met his wife Sue.
At the tender age of 22 and while still at Birmingham, Osman invented the worlds'
first real-time graphical music transcription machine, sowing the seeds for a long and
illustrious career in computer graphics. Graduating with a First Class Honours
degree, he also received the Young Engineer of the Year prize and his music
transcription machine was featured on Tomorrow's World (ensuring its rapid demise).
First Business Years
In 1983, at 25, Osman and his compatriot Dr Yavuz Ahiska started benchMark
Technologies Ltd from a bedroom in Kilburn, London and a year later, launched the
world's first real-time MS-DOS machine with high-resolution graphics. Their products
were deployed in Scotland Yard fingerprint stations and in workstations for graphic
arts and animation. benchMark delivered the world's leading computer graphics
products, enabling companies like Computer Film Company (CFC) to achieve
supremely realistic film animation. In subsequent years, CFC won Oscars and Bafta
awards using this equipment.
In 1988 benchMark was acquired by the giant DuPont corporation for $12M. Dr
Ahiska temporarily retired but Osman stayed with the company - now called DuPont
Pixel Systems, - as its VP of R&D and refocused its efforts on the emerging field of
3D graphics.
Billion Dollar company on Nasdaq
Much to everyone's surprise, in April 1994 Osman, together with his partner Yavuz
Ahiska engineered a management buy-out of DuPont Pixel in a move lauded by the
industry at the time. Osman became the CEO of the new company and Dr Ahiska
became a non-executive Director. Hence 3Dlabs was born.
The following year, 3Dlabs, a fabless semiconductor company, introduced the worlds
first workstation class graphics chip for PCs (called GLINT), thereby starting the 3D
revolution on the PC. Osman relocated the company headquarters to Silicon Valley
in California and started commuting between the US and the UK on a bi-weekly
basis. The R&D operation remained in Egham, Surrey.
A year later 3Dlabs went public on NASDAQ stock market at a valuation of $220M -
the first 3D chip company to do so and the company's products were being
incorporated into computers by Dell, IBM, Compaq, HP and Sun. In 1997, 3Dlabs
became the fastest growing company in Silicon Valley and reached a market
valuation of almost $1bn.
That year Osman bought the famous modernist house / studio complex of Roxy
Music from guitarist Phil Manzanera. The house and studio were totally refurbished in
a landmark project which took over two years to complete. The house - now a
national monument - has become an icon of modernism in this country and has been
featured in countless books, magazines and films.
Change of Direction
After September 11 and with the downturn in technology markets, Osman, like many
business leaders the world over, was re-evaluating his priorities and trying to decide
what was best for his shareholders, employees and customers. He soon came to
realise that the best interests of all concerned would be served if 3Dlabs were to
become part of a larger and stronger organization.
So in May 2002, 3Dlabs was sold to Creative Technology Ltd (of SoundBlaster fame)
in a deal valued at $170M, and Osman left the company after almost 20 years, giving
him the time and the resources to put his heart and soul into his first love - music.
Songphonic is born
The next natural step for Osman, an accomplished and passionate musician and
producer himself, was to launch his fiercely independent record label. Incensed by
the 'factory produced' and disposable nature of popular music in recent years, he
decided to incubate young singer-songwriters and produce music in a more organic
way.
Hence Songphonic Records was born, attracting an initial funding of $2M from
sources outside the UK and with a mission to incubate genuine artists. Incubation is
a common activity in technology businesses for growing new stars - a concept which
Osman re-applied to the music business.
The label is currently incubating a number of artists and so far released an album
and two EPs to critical acclaim. Osman also produced for other artists (including
Sezen Aksu and Sertab - two of Turkey's leading divas) and even mastered a
classical recording in his spare time.
Hailed by the Turkish media as the next Arif Mardin (the veteran Turkish-born record
producer whose credits include Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield and more recently
Norah Jones) Osman, humbled by the analogy, is focused on becoming a better all
round producer.
In fact, Osman's favourite recent accolade came from What Hi-Fi magazine which
praised the production of the label's debut CD ('And How' by Xanda Howe) as being
'faultless'.
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