Thanks to Apple's generous training program, "I got everything I needed to run my own business," she says. "But most of all, I got the confidence to think I could pull it off."
Evidently, latent upstarts like Miller gained more than hard skills. Apple engendered in its employees an entire creed of self-assurance. "There was something about being there that made you believe you could accomplish anything. And you were given enormous power and encouragement to try. The message was always, Go for it."
Go she did. Miller has surpassed the six-figure income she left behind at Apple, as I Love My Nanny has doubled in revenues each year since its inception, thanks in part to a steady flow of business from (who else?) Apple employees themselves. -- Anne Murphy
ART MELLOR: EXPERIENTIAL M.B.A.
At 27, Art Mellor already had been dreaming of his own start-up for years. All he lacked was an idea. And maybe an iota of experience. OK, perhaps the first clue about how to run a business, too. Details.
Mellor had a simple plan: "I decided to get a job at the smallest company that would hire me." When he interviewed at Apple descendant Cayman Systems Inc., a maker of Mac-intosh networking software and hardware based in Cambridge, Mass., he recalls, "I told them I was looking for a place that would teach me how to start my own company. They said, 'You're hired.' "
By his own account, three years at Cayman taught Mellor more about running a business than he would have learned from any business school he might have overpaid for. Just what did he learn? "To shut up and listen to customers, for one thing," he says. How to hire, select partners, set up operations, and watch his cash, to mention a few more. He stumbled across a market and a product as well.
"More than anything," contends Mellor, "I learned from the company's mistakes" -- of which even as successful an enterprise as Cayman makes plenty. "It's easier to remember those lessons because they're so painful."
Mellor and his partners have been running Midnight Networks Inc., a developer of network-management and -validation software in Waltham, Mass., for a year now. -- Anne Murphy
JEREMY JAECH: TECHNICIAN
It would be hard to find ways Jeremy Jaech, the 1990 founder of Seattle software maker Shapeware, wasn't entrepreneurially enabled by his five years with fast-growing Apple descendant Aldus Corp., the early leader in desktop-publishing software for the Macintosh.
Jaech, 38, was bank- rolled (he seeded Shapeware with proceeds from his sale of Aldus stock), inspired ("I got to believing I could do it. Watching Aldus's success, being part of it, I didn't have doubts"), and experientially M.B.A.'d ("I was enabled to start my own business by what I learned as an officer of the company").
Even more, he was able during his Aldus stint to acquire specialized knowledge of the software marketplace -- knowledge that Shapeware now trades on. After starting in product development and moving through marketing, Jaech ended up assessing other companies' technologies with then Aldus colleague and now Shapeware cofounder Ted Johnson.
"We looked at companies as prospective acquisitions or licensing partners. Repeatedly going through that evaluation process gave me a real feel for what products I might be able to build and sell myself. I learned what was viable and what was not -- not just from the technology or engineering standpoint but from the market perspective. Is there a customer? You do that enough, and ultimately you feel you can start your own software business and create marketable products," says Jaech.
Which he and Johnson have done. Shapeware, which makes software for computer-assisted drawing, has raised $4.3 million in venture capital on top of the founders' initial $150,000 investment, and has reached annualized revenues of $12 million a year. -- Abby Christopher
BRANCHING OUT
The Beginning . . .
You could count the 159 million computers sitting atop desks from Boston to Bombay and say this is what Steven Jobs wrought. But Apple didn't simply invent the personal computer, revolutionize an industry, and create thousands of jobs. It begot other businesses. Which, in turn, begot yet other businesses, which in time will no doubt beget more businesses still. It is the heritage of entrepreneurship: one generation makes the markets or the mistakes that give rise to the next. Whether in technology, know-how, or just plain opportunity, a legacy is passed on. And when the progenitor is Apple, the lines of descent become prodigious indeed; the long roll call of descendants on the next page isn't close to comprehensive. And the branches described here are just two of the countless many on Apple's family tree.
Software Arts
Apple inspired as much as it profited from the ingenuity of entrepreneurs like Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston. In 1979 the two cofounded Software Arts to develop the first electronic spreadsheet, which ran on the Apple II. Known as VisiCalc, the product won a vast discipleship of corporate users and proved crucial to sales of Apple II's. Software Arts developed subsequent versions of VisiCalc, which were also marketed by the company's publisher and Siamese twin, VisiCorp. By 1982 Software Arts was an $11-million company supporting 125 employees.
VisiCorp
Dan Fylstra had been operating a publishing business, Personal Software, from a spare bedroom. When that business was born again as VisiCalc's marketer and distributor, Fylstra changed its name to VisiCorp. By 1982 Fylstra was selling 30,000 copies a month. He also published related software products, one of which was developed by a guy named Mitch Kapor. Kapor reportedly reaped more than half a million dollars in annual royalties from sales of that product. VisiCorp ultimately bought him out. It also employed him long enough to introduce him to the spreadsheet market and give him a glimpse of an early IBM PC.
