Service Bureau Pioneer History Meeting, session one : growing and selling
The people attending this service bureau meeting represent a number of the pioneering competitors who helped form the software and services industry in the 1950s and 1960s. The discussion, begins with the varied backgrounds of the people involved in starting their businesses, and then examines the range of entrepreneurial obstacles they faced. These ranged from: competing with the dominant industry players -- IBM, SBC and the other computer manufacturers; searching for viable niches; performing creative financing; building organizations for a brand new business. They discuss the wild ride of the industry's nascent years in the 1960s, as it expanded rapidly and then the sharp decline starting in early 1969, when many companies went under. Lacking any proven play-by-play bible, each panel member discusses his or her personal choices on critical questions -- both successes and failures -- as they sought formulas to thrive in good times and survive in bad times. One distinction of this discussion is that virtually every panel member started early and then scrapped his or her way on to long careers in the industry -- even though they often took different routes.
Item Details
- Date
- 2010-05-19 (Made)
- Type
- Document
- Catalogue number
- 102743007
- Organization
- Computer History Museum
- People
- Oscar Schachter (Speaker)
Luanne Johson (Speaker)
Bob Tessler (Speaker)
Jim Houtz (Speaker)
Frank Casey (Speaker)
Doug Jerger (Speaker)
Stu Miller (Speaker)
John Rollins (Speaker)
Thomas Haigh (Speaker)
Burt Grad (Moderator) - Category
- Transcript
- Format
- Credit line
- Software Industry Special Interest Group
- Extent
- 36 p.
- Place of publication
- USA/NY/New York
- Language
- English
- Acquisition number
- X5820.2010
- Subject
- Accounting, ADAPSO, Software, Service Bureaus, Competition
- Archive collection
- CHM Oral History Collection
- Archive hierarchy
- Oral History collection