{"id":2753,"date":"2016-10-21T10:58:06","date_gmt":"2016-10-21T16:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.rootsmagic.com\/?p=2753"},"modified":"2016-10-31T08:33:26","modified_gmt":"2016-10-31T14:33:26","slug":"happy-30th-birthday-rootsmagic-part-2-getting-the-company-off-the-ground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.rootsmagic.com\/?p=2753","title":{"rendered":"Happy 30th Birthday, RootsMagic! Part 2: Getting off the Ground"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"RM-30th-Anniversary\"<\/a><\/p>\n

NOTE: This is Part 2 <\/em>in our ongoing series documenting the history of our company. If you’re just joining us, be sure to read Part 1<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Now that I had both a company and a product, all I needed to do was figure out how to sell software. \u00a0My engineering degree certainly hadn\u2019t taught me that, and I knew that selling a spreadsheet in the world of Lotus 123 was way beyond my budget. \u00a0So I decided to try out a new way of selling called \u201cshareware\u201d. \u00a0This was a newly emerging way to sell software where you made your program free to share and distribute, but asked customers to pay for it if they liked and continued to use it.<\/span><\/p>\n

I sent copies of QubeCalc out to all the shareware distributors, including the big ones like PC-SIG, Public Software Library (PSL), and Public Brand Software. \u00a0Many PC Users groups also had shareware libraries that were happy to add my program. \u00a0And then there were the bulletin board systems (BBS). \u00a0This was before the invention of the World Wide Web (WWW), and if you wanted to download a program, you did it from a dial up BBS. \u00a0My phone bill became my biggest advertising expense, uploading QubeCalc to bulletin boards all over the country. \u00a0I would spend hours uploading, and was up late every night because long distance charges were much cheaper after 11pm.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite all the time and effort I put into trying to start a software company, it was a good thing I still had my job as an engineer. \u00a0From the time I started the company, it was almost 4 months before we had our first sale. \u00a0And it happened to be to one of the shareware distributors we had sent a copy to months earlier. \u00a0On this copy of the invoice from our first sale, my biggest dilemma was what invoice number to start with. \u00a0I didn\u2019t want to use 10000 because I didn\u2019t want them to know we hadn\u2019t sold a copy yet, and 12345 seemed a little too obvious as well. \u00a0So I finally used 10234 as the first number in our order system.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"FirstOrder\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For obvious reasons I didn\u2019t have thousands of manuals sitting on a palette, so they received a glorious hand bound manual just like this one I made the same day (except that theirs didn\u2019t have my name written on the cover). \u00a0As you can tell, my artistic abilities were (and continue to be) unparalleled.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"FirstQubeCalcManual\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Now that we had our first sale, we were ready for the big time. \u00a0Sales started slowly coming in for QubeCalc, and I had just about finished writing our second program InstaCalc. \u00a0InstaCalc was also a spreadsheet program, but it had the special ability to \u201cterminate and stay resident\u201d. \u00a0Younger computer users will never be able to appreciate the magic of a \u201cTSR\u201d program. \u00a0In those old DOS days (before Windows), a computer could only run one program at a time. \u00a0If you wanted to run a different program you had to completely exit the program you were in, and start the new program. \u00a0If you wanted to go back to the first program, you had to completely exit and then start the other one back up. \u00a0There was no clicking to switch between programs\u2026 in fact there was no clicking at all since most computers didn\u2019t even have a mouse.<\/span><\/p>\n

InstaCalc would load itself into memory and then \u201cterminate\u201d, but it didn\u2019t actually remove itself from memory (it \u201cstayed resident\u201d). \u00a0So you could then start up another program (like your word processor), and InstaCalc would wait in the background until you pressed its \u201chot-key\u201d, and it would then pop up over the top of your other program. \u00a0When you exited InstaCalc it would switch right back to your other program. \u00a0It was like magic.<\/span><\/p>\n

And with the release of InstaCalc in early 1987, we doubled our product offerings, and upgraded our manuals (no more laser printer covers for us).<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Scan0020\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I was still gainfully employed as an engineer, and our sales weren\u2019t enough to make me want to give that up. \u00a0But my wife and I did talk about \u201cwhat ifs\u201d. \u00a0Little did we know that in less than 6 months we would be trying to rely on this software company to completely provide for our small family.<\/span><\/p>\n

NEXT: A move, a name change, and a big award!<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NOTE: This is Part 2 in our ongoing series documenting the history of our company. If you’re just joining us, be sure to read Part 1. Now that I had both a company and a product, all I needed to do was figure out how to sell software. \u00a0My engineering degree certainly hadn\u2019t taught me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[41],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.rootsmagic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2753"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.rootsmagic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.rootsmagic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.rootsmagic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.rootsmagic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2753"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/blog.rootsmagic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2779,"href":"http:\/\/blog.rootsmagic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2753\/revisions\/2779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.rootsmagic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.rootsmagic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.rootsmagic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}