Mitch Kapor
Mitch Kapor
Mitchell David Kapor, born November 1, 1950, is an entrepreneur best known for promoting the first spreadsheet VisiCalc, and later founding Lotus, where he was instrumental in developing the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet. He left Lotus in 1986. In 1990 with John Perry Barlow and John Gilmore, he co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and served as its chairman until 1994. Kapor has been an investor in the personal computing industry, and supporter of social causes, like the Hidden Genius Project, The...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth1 November 1950
CountryUnited States of America
We are living in an era of anxiety produced by computer and communications technology.
There are excellent public interest grounds to have a search engine whose rankings are transparent.
We have a responsibility to give people opportunities to do what they can do. It's a fundamental tenet of democratic society. Libertarians who believe in a completely minimalist state, and don't feel we have that responsibility, are harming humanity.
I routinely failed to understand that 'simple and straightforward' would have been a much better product strategy for Lotus.
People are hungry for community. They're hungry for meaning in a society that is oriented around the production and consumption of consumer goods.
It is possible to take a population of students who are failing and whose schools are failing them, who are being written off as not being college material, and if they have the right support, they can all go to college and succeed.
People in the industry foresee a time in which, for many people, the only thing they'll need on a computer is a browser.
Startups, in some sense, have gotten so easy to start that we are confusing two things. And what we are confusing, often, is, 'How far can you get in your first day of travel?' with, 'How long it is going to take to get up to the top of the mountain?'
If only I'd stayed on the West Coast, I might have made something of myself.
From 1978 when I bought my Apple II, for the next four years I just threw myself into PCs, and did lots of things - I had a little consulting practice, I formed an Apple users group in the New England area which was, of course, the first one on the East Coast, and I started a tiny cottage software business doing a statistics and graphics package for the Apple II.
Fundly is at the dynamic intersection of high-growth technology startups, social entrepreneurship, and the exploding world of social media. Kapor Capital is proud to back this passionate team, their product, and Fundly's impressive customer base.
If advertisers want to decorate their ads to increase their conversions by showing what users think, that's a good thing.
I don't think Silicon Valley understands the power of Wikipedia, how it works, or the opportunities it represents.
Linden Lab's technological breakthroughs have made 'Second Life' a truly revolutionary experience.