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Loading... Once Upon a Time in Computerland: The Amazing, Billion-Dollar Tale of Bill Millardby Jonathan Littman
   None No current Talk conversations about this book.  BrendanPMyers | Jun 23, 2014 |  no reviews | add a review
Here are all of the facts on what The Wall Street Journal calls "one of the most bizarre tales ever to come out of Silicon Valley." This book is a brilliant expose? of the darker side of entrepreneurial vision, told with fast-paced "who-done-it" flair and inside information from all of the principal characters. Journalist and computer-industry reporter Jonathan Littman charts the amazing beginnings of ComputerLand and its fascinating founder, Bill Millard. ComputerLand's meteoric rise from a tiny Silicon Valley manufacturing company to a franchising giant with $1.4 billion in sales in less than eight years is an unequaled business triumph. In fact, Forbes magazine called Millard the "Instant Billionaire." But only two years later that same magazine called Millard the "Beleaguered billionaire."
Once Upon a Time in ComputerLand explores the incredible beginnings of the personal-computer business. For the first time, it explains how the human-potential movement "est" permeated ComputerLand's corporate culture. It reveals the key link between ComputerLand and IBM that fueled the growth of the explosive personal computer industry... why the charismatic Millard suffered a palace revolt and was ousted by franchisees...the legal battle that resulted in the largest award in California history! In the tradition of such best-sellers as Indecent Exposure, The Soul of a New Machine and Greed & Glory on Wall Street, Once Upon a Time in Computerland is a classic, true-life tale of business, passion and power. - Dust jacket. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)338.7Social sciences Economics Production Business EnterprisesLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (4)
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Wikipedia in English (5)
1
Then came video arcades, and we began reading articles about home brew computer clubs and the like. We would later hear about a young man who dropped out of Harvard and drove across country to write software for a company called MITS, whose “build it yourself” computer made the cover of Popular Electronics and sparked a whole generation of young people to get excited about computers.
In the middle of all this came a man named Bill Millard, a one-time IBM employee, who started a consulting company out of his home called IMS Associates. Recognizing the nascent home computer market, he turned his company into a computer manufacturer, making a competitor to the MITS Altair computer called the IMSAI, and they flew out the doors . . . for a while.
And here’s where Millard’s genius came to the forefront. Recognizing a new market when he saw one, he started a retail chain of stores called ComputerLand and began franchising them. Before you knew it, ComputerLands were everywhere, and Millard was a billionaire.
And that’s when things got interesting.
I found this book in the remainder bin a long time ago, and it is one of the most remarkable stories of genius and madness I’ve ever read. From the young IMSAI computer company enlisting friends and family to fill orders for their hot computer, to IBM executives showing up for a business meeting on Halloween and finding the CFO of ComputerLand dressed as a cowboy, complete with gun, and not shy about brandishing it as he and the IBM executives negotiated discounts; to Millard’s flirtation with the 70s, cult-like self-improvement program EST, forcing his employees to participate; to – mostly – court battles over a $250,000 loan that may (or may not) be convertible into hundreds of millions of dollars in ComputerLand stock, this is simply one of the most compelling business books I’ve ever read.
It’s also a wonderful window into a time long past, when computer standards were just being developed, when Apple was King of the Hill – until IBM entered the market and set the status quo on its head.
If you have any interest at all in the early days of home computing, this is one of your must-reads. (