Steve Kirsch, inventor of the optical mouse, talks about what led him to his invention and the founding of a Silicon Valley company. This is a segment from the full unscripted interview.

Steve Kirsch 2009 Interview
Interview date: March 3, 2009
Interviewer: John McLaughlin, Historian and President of the Santa Clara Valley Historical Association

Interviewer's question:
"As far as your entrepreneurial experience, did you always plan to be an entrepreneur? How did that happen?"

Transcript (partial):
“In my case, I just did it out of necessity because I was interested in pursuing certain inventions that I have in some, I've always been kind of inventive throughout my history and, you know, I'd see a problem and figure out. Oh, you know, hey, here's a better way to do something. And so being inventive. So when I was at MIT, I came up with this idea for an optical mouse because I thought it'd be a better, more reliable device than the mechanical mice that we had, which were constantly breaking. And so I designed and then built an optical mouse and did all the electronics and all the software for it. And then I found that, okay, people like the idea, but I couldn't interest a company to build it. So I ended up, when I left school, ended up creating a company to do that.”

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