said, “I want to bring Steve Jobs over and see what you guys are doing.” So they
came over, we went through the same spiel, and Steve said, “I’ve got this computer
coming out called the Macintosh,” which he showed us, and he said, “so I
don’t need a computer. And I have a deal with Canon on the laser printer. But
the development team trying to interface between the computer and printer is
just failing miserably. Why don’t you sell me your company?” We said, “Steve,
we’re not for sale, we’re really out to build a business on our own.” He said, “All
right, why don’t you just sell me the software?” We said, “We have this business
plan, we raised $2.5 million, and this is what we said we’re going to do.” He
said, “I think you guys are crazy. Think about it a little bit and I’ll call you back.”
So John and I went to talk to the fellow that Bill Hambrecht had asked to
chair our board, named Q.T. Wiles. He’d been in business for a long time and,
when we described what had happened with both of these episodes, he said,
“You guys are nuts. Throw out your business plan. Your customers—or potential
customers—are telling you what your business should be. The business plan
was only used to get you the money. Why don’t you rewrite a business plan that
is focused just on providing what your customers want?”
We called back Steve Jobs and he said, “Great! Sell me your company.” We
said, “Steve, we’re not for sale.” He said, “Well, all right.” And basically he helped
construct a proposal for how we would license him this software. We agreed on
a royalty per printer. We also closed a deal shortly after that with Digital
Equipment.
We began developing the laser printer for Apple, which eventually became
the LaserWriter. We signed an agreement with Apple in December 1983,
roughly a year after we went into business (we incorporated in December
1982). Unlike any startups that I’m aware of, we turned a profit within our first
12 months, as a result of that contract with Apple. So it’s a very atypical story.
Steve did a prepayment on royalties to make sure we had the resources to stay
in business, and Apple also bought a little less than 20 percent of the company,
Charles Geschke 285
which quintupled the value of the original investors’ money. Steve wanted to
make sure that we would finish this product, because it was critical for him that
he have the LaserWriter.
In the meantime, we were talking to other companies—IBM and other
folks. We had deliberately not gone to IBM early because we knew that, if we