INC.: How did that help you cope with the demise of Software Arts?
BRICKLIN: I was invited to speak at the New York City IBM PC Users Group in September 1985. By then Lotus had acquired Software Arts, and I'd left to start my new company, Software Garden. I decided to update the slide show again. First, I showed Software Arts going to the peak. Then I showed it going downhill, leading to a big layoff. I had pictures of the badges people turned in. I went on with the story about the lawsuit and the sale to Lotus. Should I go to work for Lotus? Pictures of the big Lotus building. No, I decide to start Software Garden in-stead. Slides of my home, where I was working at the time, and of the desk in the guest room, all piled up with equipment.
INC.: How did people respond?
BRICKLIN: They loved it. They came up to me afterward and gave me such hope. They said, "That was me. That was me going from the bottom to the top and crashing down again. It's great you're starting over and have such a positive attitude." I found there's real support for people who are successful, fail, and then try again. So I kept doing the slide show and adding things. I showed my product, Dan Bricklin's Demo Program. Then the product took off and got some recognition. The next time I added, "Well, I win awards." That was so meaningful to me -- to have my peers give me an award for my new product. And it was selling well, so I knew it wasn't a fluke. I'd been rehabilitated. Meanwhile, I continued to go to industry conferences. And I started seeing more and more people who used to be on top and had fallen. They were back at conferences, and everybody still liked them and played charades with them, even though they had new jobs at other companies. So I saw the whole cycle -- that your company and you are not one.
INC.: It's a curious thing that you regarded Software Arts as a great failure and yet you never filed for Chapter 11, did you?
BRICKLIN: No, the company ended up with a positive net worth. But it did not achieve our main goal, which was to last forever. And that, you know, is one reason to have a company -- although I've since changed my ideas about what a company's goals should be.
INC.: How so?
BRICKLIN: I think that, in many cases, you should set up a company around a product, and the goal should be to get the most out of the product over its life span. Sometimes that may even involve ending the company at a certain point. Of course, companies that are built around a super product can be immensely profitable and can last a long, long time. But most companies don't have that kind of product. I see lots of examples in your publication. I see products that have a limited life span -- less than 10 years, maybe even less than three years.
INC.: That's an interesting way of thinking about a business.
BRICKLIN: It means that you really have to decide why you're in business and whether you have the product that will get you where you want to go. Are you there because you want to grow the company, because you like the growth experience? Are you building a company because you want it to last forever? Are you there to make money? Or are you there to have a certain lifestyle and get the most out of your product? Those aren't necessarily the same things.
INC.: But they aren't mutually exclusive, either. Certainly it is possible to make money, have a growing business, and build a long-term company at the same time. Look at [Microsoft Corp. founder] Bill Gates.
BRICKLIN: You're right, but remember, Microsoft has a cash cow, MS-DOS, and Bill Gates is an extraordinary person. He invests in new products and just keeps plugging away until he wins, and he has the money to do it. Most companies don't have that luxury.
INC.: Software Arts, for example?
BRICKLIN: When we started Software Arts, we had no idea what was what. The industry hadn't been around long enough to see a product life cycle. We had no models for a software company, so we operated on the book-publishing model, which turned out to be wrong. We thought we could just develop neat products and sell them -- without realizing that different organizations were needed for different types of products. We didn't appreciate that the overhead appropriate for one product might be totally inappropriate for another. So there was a lot of waste. I could see it in my company, and I saw it even more when I did consulting for Lotus. It wasn't purposeful. People just didn't understand what was necessary and what wasn't.
INC.: What do you mean?
BRICKLIN: I mean it was unclear what made you successful. Was it your documentation? Was it your packaging? Was it because you did good testing or advertised a lot or treated your employees well? I remember Lotus came out with Jazz, which had this incredible packaging. I don't know if it won any design awards, but it should have. The people at Lotus had to overcome great adversity to get it out, and they were all patting themselves on the back, saying, "We're successful because we always do the best job possible, no matter what the expense." Well, Jazz was a failure as a product. I read about [Lotus president] Jim Manzi saying it was such a failure that they shipped 62,000 copies the first month and got 64,000 back the second. He was joking that they even got bootleg copies back. So all the great packaging was a waste. We had pretty similar experiences at Software Arts.
