In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters, Second Edition

Chapter 4. POSITIONING PUZZLERS: MicroPro and Microsoft

In the 1970s, fortunes were once again to be found on the West Coast of the United States, though instead of gold, the new wealth was hacked out of silicon and on computer terminals. As had occurred in the 1840s, hordes of young people from the East Coast headed west seeking fame and fortune (the 20^th century threw in the added benefit of an IPO). One of these hardy pioneers was a fellow by the name of Seymour Rubinstein, a New York transplant who upon his arrival out west soon found work with one of the industry's pioneers, IMSAI, a company building clones of the seminal Altair system. Rubinstein ...