article thumbnail

Inspiring Entrepreneurs: What Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has learned in his business career

The Next Web

When he founded Netflix as a DVD rental service in 1997, Hastings had already led one company, Pure Software, from its birth to an IPO. It was just such a joy to develop things. Then in 1991 I came up with a product for developers that turned out to be important enough to build a company around.

Swaziland 137
article thumbnail

How Falling In Love With My Product Killed My Business

Software By Rob

Software development wasn’t giving me the satisfaction I craved from working, and I had recently been part of a startup that was now a smoking crater after the Dot Com crash. I loved this product. Rogue Wave Software loved their product too. Their products were second-to-none. The Curse of Love.

Java 66
article thumbnail

Do You Know How Long It Took to Develop Word for Windows 1.0?

Diego Basch

Not many people know the story of what would become one of the most widely used software products ever. I learned about it from a case study for my Software Project Management class in 1997, what follows is my summary ( original here , or Google it). The next year went by as the team wrote a new spec for the product.