Mitchell (Mitch) Kapor

Founder of Lotus Development Corporation.

Kapor is founder of Lotus Development Corporation, the world's largest developer of personal computer software. Kapor in 1981 created a program with Jonathon Sachs that became Lotus 1-2-3, today's standard spreadsheet. In 1982, he formed Lotus Development Corporation to sell software. In 1986, he designed Agenda, which helps people sort and order tasks. In 1987, Kapor launched ON Technology to try to design programs that will make computers easier to use. Graduating from Yale in cybernetics in 1971, he also has a master's degree in psychology. Featured on the PBS NOVA series, he recently studied linguistics and philosophy at MIT.

QUOTATION

About Kapor: "Mitch is a guy who was in the right place at the right time and saw clearly what had to be done to get very, very rich in record time. Sure enough, the Brooklyn-born former graduate student, disk jockey. . . . Transcendental Meditation teacher, mental ward counselor, and so-so computer programmer today has a $6 million house on 22 acres in Brookline, Massachusetts, a $12 million jet, and probably the world's foremost collection of vintage Hawaiian shirts. (Cringely 1992)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Biographical

Cringely, Robert X., Accidental Empires, Williams Patrick/Addison Wesley, Reading, Mass., 1992.

UPDATES

Portrait added (MRW, 2013)