In the 1990s, Gergely Vida, founder and CEO of Lightware Visual Engineering pursued his higher education at the University of Technology and Economics, in Hungary, Budapest.
During this time, he learned the fundamentals of the video technology industry in the studio of the college dorm. This was a self-organized group where the members enjoyed producing television broadcasts, repairing cameras, and creating encoders. It was a cohesive and supportive community where he acquired professional knowledge and built lifelong friendships with his teammates.
In the early 90’s Gergely also learned about projector and plasma TV repairs and later on a company called DNN offered Gergely a position as a service engineer. He was grateful for this opportunity, but his goal had always been to stand on his own feet, so he planned to found his own company sooner or later. Finally, with the support of his colleagues at DNN, Gergely established the company on the 23rd of November, 1998. Initially, the company operated primarily as a service provider of projector and plasma TV repairs, and it had a completely different scope of activities compared to the current profile.
As Gergely’s goal was rather to focus on AV products, he used his free time (which was mostly night time) to create the first functional analog composite matrix. This was the first actual Lightware product.
Meanwhile, parallel to his university studies, as part of his pre-degree tasks, Gergely built a 1/2 VGA splitter using transistors. Following that, for his thesis, he created a 2x2 analog VGA matrix. Gergely was incredibly fortunate that tinkering with such devices and various gadgets had always been his number one hobby. He was constantly drilling, carving, and tinkering, so his passion for leisure, university work and actual work finally converged.
Later, the hard work paid off as Lightware began to flourish and establish itself as a successful brand in the market.
It's worth mentioning that the company started from a 29-square-meter apartment in a residential building in downtown Budapest, and now it has evolved to an AV giant with more than 350 employees worldwide.
Stay tuned for more details about the company’s history!
