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
I soon realized that the best thing I could do for the profession of human services was to get out of it.
The critical thing in developing software is not the program, it's the design. It is translating understanding of user needs into something that can be realized as a computer program.
In my case, having knocked around at different jobs helped me get a sense of what the world is actually like and also helped me get out of a cocoon.
I'm like George Lucas, bringing together a creative team that will come up with a unique, well-crafted product.
Everyone has a subconscious and automatic preference of this over that. Once you're aware of that, you can take steps to change.
I'm fascinated by management and organizations: how organizations get things done and how successful organizations are built and maintained, how they evolve as they grow from start-ups to small companies to medium companies to big companies.
I learned my lesson on several 'swing for the fences' deals, ... I'm not afraid to step up to the plate and take a big risk, but I don't want the whole thing to be driven by hype. People who hit a lot of home runs also strike out a lot.
I had no fear of speaking to large audiences.
Oh no, this was before that, I was already in my 20s by the time the 6502 came out. This was all transistor flip-flops. It was a gated adder with a rotary telephone dial as the primary input device.
No, my family is Russian, Georgian, via Ellis Island.
We have to examine very carefully any privacy-reducing technology.
The organizational design for OSAF came about as a result of thinking about how to create an organization that could make these products and bring them into the world and help start something in which they could thrive in the long term.
E-mail is a victim of its own success.
Every year we are greeted by a host of new apps that will 'change the way we think' about ordering takeout, 'fundamentally transform' our shoe purchases, or 'revolutionize' the way we edit photos.