Name: Jecca Cervero

Section: O0C

Case study Chapter 4

Joe Kraus

Cofounder, Excite

Joe Kraus started Excite which is originally called Architext in 1993, with five Stanford classmates or friends. One of that is Graham Spencer, the smartest person for Kraus. Once Graham agreed to join Joe Kraus, they gathered four of their friends. These four friends were willing, capable, technical, and enthusiastic. Because they were all friends and have same interest, they had brought many ideas in starting a company. But the best idea came from Graham which is to create a tool for searching. To pursue what they want to create, they tried to get $3,000 from each of their parents, and five of the six parents put up so they have $15,000. After they graduate, they set up shop in the garage of Kraus’ house. It was a classic setup. Kraus’ parents were very supportive. They were coding in the garage for 18 months.

When Kraus graduated from college, her girlfriend game him a book called “Accidental Empires”. It was a gossip history of Silicon Valley by a guy whose pen name is Bob Cringely.  And from there, it was all started. From reading the Cringely book, which led to a lunch with the author of the book, which led to an introduction in InfoWorld, which led to a $100,000 contract with InfoWorld, which led to a board meeting with the IDG Company which is the parent company of InfoWorld, which led to a VC, which led to another VC, and which led to a financing. Excite built itself unwittingly off Netscape. Without the deal with Netscape, they don’t think Excite would have had its run at all.

Excite went public in 1996 and in 1999 merged with high-speed Internet service @Home.com to become Excite@Home.

And in 2004, Kraus and his friend Graham Spencer founded Jotspot, an application wiki company.

THREE THINGS I LEARNED

• You’d rather fund a great team than a great idea. They have a bad idea, great teams can figure out a better one--- So the affiliation of the founders is important to come up to an excellent idea.  The relationship is essential.
• Be persistent. Always think that other people should think that what you make is the biggest and greatest thing in the world.
• Be the best that you can be and make the best that you can make.

Name: Jecca Cervero

Section: O0C

Case study Chapter 5

Software Arts

Dan Bricklin

            Dan Bricklin and his friend Bob Frankston founded software arts in 1979 to produce visicalc, the first electronic spreadsheet. Bricklin met Bob when he was a freshman at MIT. He work in labs because he really believe that a good way to learn an area in college is to work on a real project in one of their labs at MIT. Bricklin’s first job was given to make some modifications and finish the work  of Bob Frankston. Bob’s thesis was a project called Limited Service System. Bob and Dan got to know each other very well. They always wanted to found a business together. They both have parents whoa were entrepreneurs. So, it was a normal thing for them to start a business. Their advantage is that they have been friends and not just business associates. Lot of the structure of their deals together was based on friendship and not on other things. For them the friendship was stronger than other business stuff.

They first started on their own. Bricklin was in business school, bob was working as a consultant. When Bricklin graduated from MIT, he worked for DEC-Digital Equipment Corporation and then he worked in Fasfax  Corporation. From that two works, he realized that you didn’t have to be in a big business and small companies were just as exciting and just ascutting edge at big companies.

            Then, he went to Harvard School. As a student at Harvard Business School, Bricklin how convenient it would be if they could be made on desktop computers instead. He wrote a prototytpe in Basic over a weekend, and then he and frankston set about turning into a product.

            Their first release shipped in October 1979, it ignited the personal computer revolution. Visicalc was the “killer app” for personal computers.Visicalc was not produced by a company organized like a modern startup. Visicalc wasd developed by Software Arts, It was renamed as Visicorp. Dan Fylstra, head of their publisher Personal Software and one of the founding editors of Byte Magazine years before, decided to take out a brash teaser ad in the back section. Publicity started to pick up. Bob and Dan appeared on the cover of Inc. Magazine. By there, VisiCalc was known, the first electronic spreadsheet for personal computers, developed by Software Arts and published by VisiCorp.

Three things I learned

• In buiding a business, it is necessary to have a partner, not juat a partner who has all the skills of an entrepreneur but the important thing is how you build a good relationship between the two of you-the friendship. By there, you will realized that friendship was stronger than a lot of business stuff.
• By arguing with others about something, that is one way to learn and to test your understanding of things.
• If you have the quality and if you know that you can do it, don’t hesitate to do something cause you’re just wasting your time.

Name: Jecca Cervero

Section: O0C

Chapter 6

Mitchell Kapor

Cofounder, Lotus Development

Mitchell Kapor is the cofounder of Lotus. Kapor had become obsessed with personal computers. Kapor was employed as a radiodisc jockey, a commercial progressive rock station. It was also in this period that he became interested in Transcendental Meditation, going on to teach the philosophy in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he also worked as a low-level computer programmer. In 1978, he also graduated counseling. Kapor also subsequently began a career as a mental health counselor. Kapor left his counseling career to attend the Master's of Science in Management program at the MIT 

Kapor founded Lotus Development Corporation with Jonathan Sachs, who was responsible for technical architecture and implementation, and created Lotus 1-2-3. He had implemented spreadsheets. But he had made the mistake of being in a business with technical people and no business people. He had been a data general, and the first spreadsheet that they implemented was for data general minicomputer. Kapor and Sachs had the basic concept in mind, which was an integrated spreadsheet and graphing program with other stuff. Kapor served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Lotus from 1982 to 1986, and as a director until 1987. Lotus' first year of operations, the company achieved revenues of $53,000,000 and had a successful public offering. In 1984 the company tripled in revenue to $156,000,000. The number of employees grew to over a thousand.

Lotus' first product was presentation software for the Apple II known as Lotus Executive Briefing System. Mitch founded Lotus after working as head of development at VisiCorp and selling the rights to his products; VisiPlot and VisiTrend to VisiCorp.

Shortly after Kapor left VisiCorp, he and Sachs produced an integrated spreadsheet and graphing program. Even though IBM and VisiCorp collaborated on VisiCalc for the PC and VisiCalc shipped simultaneously with the PC, Lotus had a superior product. Lotus released Lotus 1-2-3 in January 1983. The name referred to the three ways the product could be used, as a spreadsheet, graphics package, and database manager. In fact the latter two functions were less often used, and 1-2-3 was the most powerful spreadsheet available. Sales were huge, turning Lotus into the largest independent software vendor in the world almost overnight. The business plan had called for $1 million in sales in the first year, and the actual results were $54 million. IBM acquired Lotus in 1995 for $3.5 bllion.

THREE THINGS I LEARNED

·        Create a workplace that treated people well. There are people that may think you are stupid for running your idea and they may not listen to you. If you want to pursue your dreams, you should be diligent and patient enough to face this kind of challenge.

·        Make a conscious effort to have a creative atmosphere. Being creative is a big factor to be a good programmer.

·        Being a programmer you should be passionate, committed and you should believe in what you are doing.