Maria Lourdes C. Capilitan                                                                                    

Sysanal(O0A)

June 10, 2008

Case Study

Mitchell Kapor

(Cofounder, Lotus Development)

            Anyone whose willing to do start up and programs can do it even if you don’t have any backgrounds to computers. You should go to a field which you are not expert with yet you should find and trust people who have background on the said field. Having many ideas will lead to misunderstanding because you will not know which one you will do.

            Mitchell Kapor and Jonathan Sachs Develop Lotus in 1983. They created their own spreadsheet. Called Lotus 1-2-3. Visicalc became a new standard. Kapor was a product Manager, he wrote Visipilot and Visitrend. Lotus can handle larger spreadsheet like charting, plotting, database capabilities. Kapor was also cofounder of Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in 1990.

            Lotus started when Mitchell K. became obsessed and he tought Apple II to practice it and have an investment analyst. They created a statistics and graphics product on Apple II, it was called “Troll”. They met Dan Fylstra and Peter Jennings, they made an agreement that if kapor will make more offerings since they have such hot products, while the publisher will rewrite to bring out a companion product to Visicalc. Kapor had no background in computer science. After writing and rewriting tiny troll which was called Visiplot. Bob Frankston had develop data intercharge format and Visiplot has one of the first other software applications to support it.

            After the declaration if IBM PC. Kapor and Sachs did something for IBM which maybe the reason why they are successful. The finish products are being sell to the retail stores not to the IBM sales forces. This was very radical idea. If apple had 64K memory space, they cannot do a lot of spreadsheets activity and that’s why IBM created a 16 bit microprocessors (640K) computer Kapor and Sachs optimized a product for it. The Lotus 1-2-3 have an advantage to IBM PC because of allowing users to customize that made 1-2-3 a second generation product. They made some parts to make people amaze. It is the one button graphing in particular. Amazon which is the first web browser was seen on public so Sachs created a version of it that took 14-15 moths of programming it. Lotus is much faster than Visicalc because they are the first spreadsheet that was called “Natural Order of Recalsulation”. The code was tuned to Intel 808X-16 bit architecture. Sachs and Kapor talk to understand issues and limitations to modify the design that was consistent with what could actually do. Kapor was more interested in having distinctive, innovative products and thinking what would make sense for a product line for their business.

            Kapor’s time n Silicon Valley, had help him to realize and understood about his passionate in applications, be integrated, and easier to use. The product that will help people to be more productive. Kapor also want to be financially independent. When he pushed IPO a lot of problem occur, like their company was very new to the public. He actually wanted to be a software designer.

            The mentors of Kapor is Ben Rosen. They came to a point that they wanted to quit because of the shipping and having the feeling of they are getting out of control. They came out to the point of closing the company but Kapor didn’t allow it. Kapor said to entrepreneurs the things they should do before meeting Venture Capital. Specially to inform them in choices to financing. The best thing that did for an investor is to bring them to a finest restaurant and buy expensive for it is just to make the investors be your partner. Kapor advices to the people who want to start a start-up that everyone somes with some kind of agenda. Second, you should be customized. Lastly, find people that want to partner with you not just for their business, but wants you to be a game changer.