On The Move, Again
A love for disruptive media is core to my DNA. I recall the day that a Japanese company brought one of the first computer controlled laser video discs to Peachtree Software in 1981, and I saw there the potential of what was then beginning to be called “multimedia.” The 80s were an era when this technology was used primarily for interactive training, and Steve Roden (who later joined me at Comsell) did some of the great pioneering work in that area. However, to me the better potential was in the use of the disc as an image storage medium. That gave rise to a number of new, more immersive applications ranging from real estate to travel.
Keep in mind this was all before our former Vice President invented the Internet, and everything we did in the 80s on laser disc and then in the early 90s on CD-ROM was quickly supplanted by the capabilities of the Net. All the work we did worrying about interlaced images on analog media and various codecs on digital media ultimately was for naught. But, as you may have read in my previous post about touring the local computer collection, each such effort in technology did leave behind some value for subsequent platforms. Much of what we did in the area of UI, for example, still lives in many Web applications.
In those days, (not to sound too Biblical) Atlanta was a crossroads for much of the advancement of the computing industry. We had the world’s largest software company (MSA), the modem standard (Hayes) and many other companies whose innovations were important for the industry. There was a spring Comdex in Atlanta that for many years brought the luminaries and the new ideas to our doorstep. Make no mistake, it feels great when your startup community is a magnet for the world of technology. I can tell you firsthand that the excitement in the air actually translates to meaningful advancements and innovation. This boom continued through the 90s... I think it’s fair to say we rode the Dot-com bubble pretty well with some major wins, the creation of an Internet security cluster and solidification of leadership in other areas like transactional processing. Not that I didn’t still spend a good bit of time in the Valley on various deals, but we had a lot going for us here.
