Word: visicalc
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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That winter Bricklin, an M.I.T graduate and confessed computer "nerd" since his teens in Philadelphia, and an M.I.T. buddy, Bob Frankston, 33, worked day and night to develop a program for doing such number crunching on a small computer. The result was an electronic spread sheet: VisiCalc (visible calculator). Initially, VisiCalc got a lukewarm reception from computer stores. But when another B School grad, Daniel Fylstra, 31, who had just started up his own company, Personal Software Inc., stepped up the marketing, VisiCalc took off. Word began to get out about its enormous powers. With only a few presses...
...bench mark for success among independent programmers remains the record of Daniel Bricklin, a Harvard Business School graduate, and Robert Frankston, a computer scientist, who created VisiCalc in 1979. With nearly 400,000 copies sold for up to $495 apiece, VisiCalc, a financial-analysis system for businesses, remains the single bestselling piece of software. Like other successful programmers, Bricklin, 31, and Frankston, 33, have expanded their business well beyond the prototypical home attic where many first get their start. They reinvested the VisiCalc income (more than $11 million) in their new company, Software Arts, with headquarters in an old chocolate...
...Apple Computer Inc.'s distinctive trademark, a multicolored apple with a bite missing. Others have slightly changed names like Apolo. Asian manufacturers have so successfully duplicated the silicon micro chips in the core of the Apple machines that the imitations can use a broad range of software, from VisiCalc, the top-selling business budgeting and planning program, to video games like Snack Attack and Rocket Intercept...
...hangs out with his pals in a Market Street computer store, often plotting some new electronic scam. Barry (not his real name) currently boasts an illicit library of about 1,000 pirated (i.e., illegally copied) programs worth about $50,000 at retail prices, including such software gems as VisiCalc, the popular business management and planning program. Before security was tightened up, he regularly plugged his computer into such distant databanks as The Source (which provides news bulletins, stock prices, etc.) via telephone without paying a cent...
Fylstra, who last week changed the name of his firm to VisiCorp, is at one of the many turning points for an entrepreneur. The company faces stiff competition from VisiCalc's many upstart imitators, among them makers of computer hardware who are selling more and more of their own software. Industry analysts see VisiCorp as a likely candidate for going public during the next two years. With appraisals of the company's worth running about $125 million, a public stock offering would make Fylstra an even wealthier young man. That would free him to strike out in another...