After recently selling his multimillion dollar, Bay Area-based defense technology company DB Control, Peter Dahl, 54, moved back to his hometown of Santa Barbara only to find himself feeling “empty” after having run his own business for more than 30 years. So he was on the prowl for the next move when, in March, Dahl heard that the annual Game Developers Conference was taking place in San Francisco. He quickly called his nephew Leif Dahl, who was into video games, and the recent Chico State graduate happened to be working at the conference as a volunteer. The two got to talking, and just one month later, they launched Techtonic Games, Santa Barbara’s first video game development company.
At first, the elder Dahl wasn’t sure if video games were for him. “I wanted to sink my teeth into something substantial, having already done military electronics for 30 years,” he explained. But the idea of it being a family business grew on him, so he funded the project, leaving Leif in charge of putting together a team of programmers, artists, audio specialists, and game designers. In no time, eight Chico State grads relocated to Santa Barbara to start the company.
Having built a business from scratch before, Peter knew exactly what to do, explaining, “I know how to implement things really fast.” The first step was finding a building, which wasn’t too hard because, he explained, “They didn’t really need much, just a place to set up tables and computers.”