Founders at Work.pdf

Dan Bricklin 87
Bricklin: Oh, we had lots of disagreements, all the time. People always thought
the company was going to die, because we’d yell at each other on all sorts of
issues. It was usually over technical stuff. Bob’s much more aggressive in many
ways than I am, and I’m much more conservative. So we’re very complementary.
While I’m disorganized, he’s more disorganized, in certain things, so he
depends on me for the drive to get things to completion. On the other hand, I
depend on him for some of the reaching for the stars.
So we were very complementary, but that’s tough. It’s like having old married
couples who spat all the time, always yelling at each other. It wasn’t as bad
as some businesses, where it actually is a married couple. But our friendship
has continued to this day. As people know, in the business—like Bill Gates is
known for this, about being really tough in meetings, and arguing and stuff like
that—that’s just a way of testing your own understanding of things. By arguing
with others about it, that’s how you learn. And, if somebody can’t take the arguing
with it, then maybe they don’t really believe in what they’re talking about
and they don’t understand it well enough.
We’d argue and then we’d go out to lunch together, because it wasn’t based
on animosity. We had enough problems with people outside.
Livingston: Do you remember a time someone tried to take advantage of you
or cheat you?
Bricklin: We needed to move, so we bought a building and rehabbed it,
because it was not in the best of shape. It was an old factory, and we turned it
into programmer heaven. It turned out that we spent too much time on that,
and we should have spent more time on the product. So stick to the knitting,
and focus. But, we did really well by that, and, basically, the only money I got—
other than my salary—out of Software Arts was the money I made on selling
the building.
When we got the building, we got a loan to pay for it. We had a bank we’d
been working with for years at the time, and we told them we wanted to do a
loan, but we wanted no personal guarantees. When you have personal guarantees,
they’ll take your house. So, we wanted no personal guarantees. And the
bank said, “Sure.” We came down to the last closing papers, and we looked at
the papers, and what does it say? Personal guarantees! They said, “Oh well,
that’s standard. We always do that.” We got another bank, and sure enough as
they were about to close, in came the personal guarantees. It wasn’t until the
third bank—we finally got one—that we did it with no personal guarantees.
Livingston: How did Lotus end up buying you?
Bricklin: At the last minute, when the company was about to go under, we
found some people who were willing to buy the company, but they wanted me
to spend a year working for them, and I was not happy about this at all. I ran
into Mitch Kapor on an airplane, and we talked. That’s Monday. Friday night,
Lotus bought our company—they bought the assets of the company. So finally
we sold the company, and I’m out, with no strings attached. That was great. And