Dan Fylstra is a pioneer of the software products industry. A graduate of the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of th ...

, in 1975 he was a founding associate editor of ''

Byte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...

'' magazine. In 1978 he co-founded Personal Software, and that year reviewed the

Commodore PET 2001 The Commodore PET is a line of personal computers produced starting in 1977 by Commodore International. A single all-in-one case combines a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, Commodore BASIC in read-only memory, keyboard, monochrome monitor, an ...

and TRS-80 Model I for ''Byte'' while studying for an MBA at the

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA ...

, having ordered each almost immediately after release. Personal Software became the distributor of a new program called VisiCalc, the first-ever computer

spreadsheet A spreadsheet is a computer application for computation, organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data entered in ...

. In his marketing efforts Fylstra ran teaser ads in ''Byte'' that asked, considering electronic spreadsheets were an entirely new product category, "How did you ever do without it?" The VisiCalc-Apple connection suggested the hypothesis of the " killer app"—or the "software tail that wags the hardware dog." Once VisiCalc caught on, people came into computer stores asking for VisiCalc and then also the computer (the Apple II) they would need to run the program. VisiCalc sales exceeded 700,000 units by 1983. Fylstra's software products company, later called VisiCorp, was the #1 personal-computer software publisher in 1981 with $20 million in revenues as well as in 1982 with $35 million (exceeding

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

which became the largest such firm in 1983). Fylstra is the former president of Sierra Sciences, and is currently president of software vendor Frontline Systems. He joined the Libertarian Party in 1998.Dan Fylstra – Libertarian
from Advocates for Self-Government website

References

External links

by Dan Fylstra. * ttp://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/personal-computers/17/305/1232 Photo of Dan Fylstra with VisiOn and VisiCalc–

Computer History Museum The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a museum of computer history, located in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the information age, and explores the computing revolution and its impact o ...

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Fylstra, Dan

Year of birth missing A year or annus is the orbital period of a planetary body, for example, the Earth, moving in its orbit around the Sun. Due to the Earth's axial tilt, the course of a year sees the passing of the seasons, marked by change in weather, the h ...

Living people Members of the Libertarian Party (United States) Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Harvard Business School alumni