A Canonical Boomer’s Tale
Sunday, September 16th, 2007Steven Levy in Newsweek:
And is there a more canonical boomer’s tale than that of Mitch Kapor (born 1950), who majored in psychology at Yale, was heavily involved in the campus radio station, and after graduation became … a teacher of Transcendental Meditation. But ever since he’d come across a copy of “Computer Lib” in a Harvard Square bookstore, he was fascinated by computers, particularly the promise they had to empower ordinary people. He began designing software, and then, around the time the IBM PC was launched, came out with an idea to make spreadsheets more powerful. His product was Lotus 1-2-3, and when he sought funding for his company, in a long letter to venture capitalist Ben Rosen he presented his idealistic vision of a humanitarian company. There are things as important to me as profit, he wrote. Now, he says, “It was my equivalent of ‘Don’t Be Evil’ ” [the unofficial Google motto].