Software Arts Wrote The First Best-seller

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The next year, however, word of VisiCalc's powers started to spread through office grapevines, and people began showing up in computer stores to buy Apple computers just so they could use VisiCalc. Because Software Arts didn't adapt VisiCalc to another machine until the fall of 1980, the program is even credited by some observers with giving Apple Computer Inc. a push into first place in revenues in the personal-computer market. Since then, sales of VisiCalc have added up to nearly 200,000 copies and Bricklin's and Frankston's problem hasn't been so much to keep up with the growth in revenues as to keep up with the growth in the growth rate.

Software Arts has so far been able to keep a firm hand on its spectacular growth by having people like Julian Lange spend their waking hours in the future, anticipating the needs of the company. And Bricklin and Frankston complement each other in numerous ways, with Bricklin leaning to the business side and Frankston leaning to the technical side. When the company started, Bricklin was fresh out of business school and set it up as a textbook case of professional management. "This company is like my third year of business school," he says. "I get to try out everything here that I learned there."

The company's growth is fast enough to upset daily routines frequently. The organizational chart changes every three months or so. The number of employees grew from 4 to 35 in 12 months, and this month is around 50. And the company will be moving into its own building and quadrupling its space next spring. "We're trying to grow in a controlled way," says Lange. "That means always being aware of where we're going in the next six months, or year, or five years.Right now we have the management to get up to about 100 employees, but we've got to worry about the next quantum leap, probably in about a year."

It's difficult to forecast what's going to happen in an industry that's only five years old and a company that's only three years old, particularly when both are growing so fast. So the reins on Software Arts's growth are held very loosely. When Bricklin or Frankston or Lange talks about the company's future, he speaks vaguely. "We have a vision of the company as the industry leader," says Lange. "And we have sincere commitment to quality because that's the only way to maintain our leadership."

Nobody at Software Arts will talk about sales projections or future products. Everyone the company deals with is required to sign a nondisclosure agreement in order to find out what it's up to. "We've been burned before by media hype that promised more than we could deliver," says Bricklin.

Hype they've had. The company has been written up in Business Week, Fortune, Time, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, not to mention numerous computer magazines. And Bricklin was recently presented the Grace Murray Hopper Award by the Association for Computing Machinery, a kind of Pulitzer prize for significant accomplishment in computers by people under 30. "Was it Andy Warhol who said everybody would be famous for 15 minutes?" asks Bricklin. "I've had my 15 minutes. Now I can get back to work."

Working at Software Arts is in many ways like living in a college dormitory.The average age of the employees is around 30, and they are crammed into tiny offices two at a time. Blue jeans and work shirts are common, many of the men wear beards and sideburns, and the company refrigerator is stocked with Coke, Pepsi, and an assortment of natural fruit juices.

There are a few differences. Everyone, including the receptionists, has a computer terminal. All the interoffice mail is sent through the company's newest Prime minicomputer. Dozens of personal computers, Apples, Radio Shacks, IBMs, and others are scattered throughout the offices, most with their innards permanently exposed.

These offices aren't quite as relaxed as a dormitroy, either. Nobody talks about it, but there's an underlying apprehension about how the company's next product will will be received. How do you beat the record of a product as successful as VisiCalc? "For a while there, we were afraid to do anything else because it might not be as good," says Bricklin. "But that passed. Now we're more concerned about building a company than about whether one product is better than another." Adds Frankston, "Who has time to worry?"

There are other questions about the future for Software Arts. A number of programs similar to VisiCalc have been introduced in the last year with names like SuperCalc, Execuplan, T/Maker II, and Supercomp-Twenty. "Eventually VisiCalc will become a generic name," says Bricklin, "Or at least someone will come along with KillerCalc."

And the fantastic success of both Software Arts and Personal Software has strained the relationship between the two companies. Fylstra moved his company to California in 1979 and has since built a "family" of Visi-products that use many of the same commands and much the same logic as VisiCalc. His company, which had revenues of $12 million last year, is frequently credited with creating VisiCalc, a confusion that Fylstra would prefer not to clear up and that annoys Bricklin and Frankston to no end. Software Arts will be trying to market its own products in the future.

Despite the problems, people are enormously confident at Software Arts. They know they're good, they know they're on the leading edge of new industry, and they see a future with unlimited opportunities. "It's nice to have a hand in the company that produced VisiCalc," says Lange. "It's the most fun thing I've ever done."

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