plan, there were about half a dozen companies who had raised money to do
something similar. Not the same, but similar. Fortunately, the other five all executed
that business plan, and we didn’t. And they all disappeared.
It shows you the power of getting good advice and having the nerve to take
that advice. Because literally, there were half a dozen companies all formed
within about a 12- to 18-month period with venture capital both on the East
Coast and out here in Silicon Valley, all trying to do the same thing. And sometimes,...

had seen what had happened with all the other technologies that preceded it.
They never figured out a way to commercialize the Ethernet. They had managed
to commercialize the original laser printer (it was called the 9700), but it
was for mainframe computers; it replaced line printers. Line printers were the
old printers that used to be on mainframe computers, and they were big, noisy
devices that could only print text. The 9700 could print pages that were more
sophisticated. But it was mainframe printing, it wasn’t office printing, and it
wasn’t focused...

sure where it was coming from but he knew it wasn’t just doing what he did better
or more efficiently. It was going to come from somewhere else. So I suspect
it was a market that was already looking for a solution and we provided it at the
right time.
The amount of printing has not decreased because of the “paperless office,”
it’s increased. We’re the people (Adobe and the others we’ve partnered with)
who are responsible for all those catalogs you get in the mail. If you think back
25 years ago,...

few years later I brought home something that I knew was pretty good. I
showed it to my dad and didn’t say much. He looked up with a big smile on his
face and said, “Now that’s good.” That was a wonderful moment.
Livingston: Is there anything that Adobe does now to preserve the efficiency or
the “startupyness” of a young company?
Geschke: It gets harder as you get bigger. What John and I have tried to do as
chairs of the board is to reinforce to the current CEO, Bruce Chizen, the
...

to the spouse if it was woman, a bottle of cognac if the spouse was a man, and
then champagne to the employee.
We did that for the first 18 months and then it got to be too much and we
started giving it to them at work. I suspect we don’t do that anymore. Doing
things like that to make people feel like they were part of a community helped
build a rapport inside the company so that our turnover rate has been among
the lowest in the Valley ever since we’ve been...