
Zenverge founders, Amir Mobini and Tony Masterson, honed up on their MPEG technology prowess with startup iCompression (founded 1996) and later at Globespan which acquired the startup in May 2000 for $400 million -- just as the tech boom was peaking. Working together for 14 years, they were developing MPEG encoding products which became a hot tech subject in the late 1980s and PVRs were making their debut in the consumer market. At iCompression, the pair worked on low-cost, real-time MPEG2 video/audio/system encoders for consumer and PC markets. At Globespan, Mobini served as an engineering director and helped develop the world's first fully integrated MPEG-2 encoder and codec ICs. Eventually, GlobespanVirata spun out the video technology to form Conexant Systems and its MPEG encoding business ramped up to about $30 million annual run rate by 2005.