THE INNOVATORS

Author:Walter Isaacson
Format: mobi

ispnentrepreneurs,d waseid bytospecofstarti busess. Ad wasgoo team play,whonew how tofind trptnes. “Id trbinaona>ofexiend nowledgo developstmeta ned peo d,” obseved.85>a>small>So teamd upwith afiend d metatMIT, Bob Frankston,anorsengerwhose farwaentrepreneur. “TabilityforDd mo work s a team wacruci,” Frankston sai. AlthoughBricklinchavwritentogramone,instead sketched ioutand ad Frankston developit. “It gavhim tfredom tofocus on whtogram shoudo rartnow todo it,” Frankston saiofircollaboon.86>a>small>Tfirstdecisionywao developtogram foruse onpu rartnonDEC busesspu. Thychose tAp IIbecause Wozniakd miarchictu openand tnspnenoughttfuncions nedd bysdevelopes easilyccessible.1justify">Tycread tototyp ovra ekend onnAp IIyborow from someonewho,in effct,become a third collaboo,DFylst. A recngradue ofHarv BusessSchool,Fylstd launched s publishipany,whfocused ongamssushess,trnoutofhisCambridgaptmn. Inordrforsindustryto developsepelyfrom thindustry,itwanecssaryto havpublishes honew how toomoe and distribuoducts.1m" align="justify">Because both Bricklin and Frankston had good business sense and a feel for consumer desires, they focused on making VisiCalc a product, not just a program. They used friends and professors as focus groups to make sure the interface was intuitive and easy to use. “The goal was to give the user a conceptual model that was unsurprising,” Frankston explained. “It was called the principle of least surprise. We were illusionists synthesizing an experience.”87

Among those who helped turn VisiCalc into a business phenomenon was Ben Rosen, then an analyst with Morgan Stanley who later turned his influential newsletter and conferences into a business of his own and then started a venture capital firm in Manhattan. In May 1979 Fylstra demonstrated an early version of VisiCalc at Rosen’s Personal Computer Forum in his hometown of New Orleans. In his newsletter, Rosen enthused, “VisiCalc comes alive visually. . . . In minutes, people who have never used a computer are writing and using programs.” He ended with a prediction that came true: “VisiCalc could someday become the software tail that wags (and sells) the personal computer dog.”

VisiCalc catapulted the Apple II to triumph, because for a year there were no versions for other personal computers. “That’s what really drove the Apple II to the success it achieved,” Jobs later said.88 It was quickly followed by word-processing software, such as Apple Writer and EasyWriter. Thus did VisiCalc not only stimulate the market for personal computers, but it helped to create an entire new profit-driven industry, that of publishing proprietary application software.

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