only text, but also images—imagesetters they’re called today—combine that
with all of the software and market it to the Fortune 500 as internal publishing
systems that they could use to have more control and more rapid response in
their printing needs.
Bill liked the idea—partly because he was always frustrated with the financial
printers to get his prospectuses out—and so he said that he would support
it. “But neither one of you guys have ever run a business before, right?” And we
said, “That’s correct.” He said, “Well, I’ve checked around and you have a lot of
respect in the technical community, but I’m going to hire a guy to be a consultant
for you who is a marketing person. He’ll help you write a business plan
because I need to have a business plan to talk to the investors.”
Charles Geschke 283
We said, “Fine.” So we wrote our business plan. John and I had managed
enough projects that we knew what the costs would be to bring out a first product.
We put that together in a plan, gave it to Bill, and he said, “Fine, you can
quit your jobs.” We said, “We don’t exactly have the money yet.” He said, “You’ll
have to trust me.” So John and I quit. Bill loaned us $50,000 just as a personal
note so that we could go out and start leasing a Vax computer to do our work on.
We eventually found the name Adobe Systems and we were in business.
Livingston: How did you choose the name Adobe?
Geschke: We originally started thinking of names that were vaguely associated
with what we were going to do, and we ran into the problem that there were so
many corporations founded in California that it was difficult to get a unique
name. So we thought, “Well, maybe we shouldn’t put too much of what we’re
going to do in our name, because who knows where this will lead?” At PARC,
we literally threw a dart at the map when we were starting a new project and
needed a code name. If it landed on a river or a town, then that was the name
of the project. I was looking at a map of this area and I noticed Adobe Creek—
in fact, it runs right behind my house—and I said, “How about Adobe?” John
thought about it and said, “Fine.” And that’s how Adobe Systems came to be.
Livingston: So you and John quit your jobs at the same time?
Geschke: Yes. My father and mother thought I had lost my mind, because I had
this great job at Xerox, a nice big office overlooking the whole Bay Area. They
said, “What are you doing?” I said, “You know, my ego may get bruised if this
doesn’t work, but I’ll always have a job. If you have a PhD in computer science,