AlmostPerfect: How a Bunch of Regular Guys Built WordPerfect Corporation

A former executive at the WordPerfect Corporation details the company's rise in the computer industry and what compelled him to leave after ten years as a driving force in the company

How the Utah software empire of WordPerfect was built from scratch by three graduates of Brigham Young University. Peterson, the company's original marketing director, was booted out in 1992, just as the firm topped $500 million in sales. WordPerfect--the 80's most wildly successful word-processing product--began in 1977 as an idle summer project by an underemployed Brigham Young computer-science instructor named Alan Ashton. When the program miraculously worked on the mainframe computers that were then the norm, he hired Bruce Bastion (the author's brother-in-law and a college band leader) to help sell it, and the author (then part-owner of a failing drapery store) to be business manager and marketing guru at $5.00 an hour. A few years later, Ashton and Bastion appeared on the Forbes 400 list of America's richest people and--in spite of predictable but fascinating fumbles and glitches--sales were soaring and the company couldn't hire programmers and support personnel quickly enough. But in addition to a fast-flowing stream of new PC- compatible WordPerfect products, the company launched a series of secondary products with names like P-Edit, MathPlan, SSI*Data, SSI*Forth, and InForms--all of which failed. Meanwhile, Peterson- -desperately trying to promote all the new software while maintaining a semblance of order in a corporation now 600-strong and full of turf wars and chaos--became something of a tyrant. In the final battle--fought over distribution strategy for WordPerfect 5.0--he lost and was abruptly out: ``There was dancing in the aisles of some departments.'' Nevertheless, he shares his painfully acquired management philosophy in an afterword. A well-written and often hair-raising tale of serendipitous software success, given a special timeliness by the comparable corporate shake-out at Apple, including the firing of longtime chief John Sculley. (First printing of 25,000) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In 1980 Peterson was hired as the $5 an hour part-time office manager of a small Utah software company. He eventually rose to become executive vice-president and ultimately assume the day-to-day running of the company. By 1992, when he left under duress, WordPerfect Corporation had grown from six employees and $20,000 a month in sales to 4000 employees and annual sales of more than half a billion dollars. This story of the rise of a new industry is reminiscent of Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine ( LJ 8/81); it describes the roller-coaster ride involved in getting viable, profitable products out the door while worrying about what IBM and Microsoft were doing. Recommended for general business collections.
- Vincent P. Schmidt, SWL Inc., Santa Barbara, Cal.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Computer entrepreneurs such as Steven Jobs and Bill Gates are fairly well known. On the other hand, even though their company controlled almost 50 percent of the word-processing software market at one point, the "regular guys" who built the WordPerfect Corporation are relatively anonymous. That, in fact, may have been Peterson's problem. Part of the three-man team that ran WordPerfect for nearly a dozen years, Peterson owned 1 percent of the company (each of his two partners owned 49.5 percent) and was responsible for marketing and sales. As Gates' Microsoft surpassed WordPerfect's market share, Peterson's partners took drastic steps to turn the company around. They forced Peterson out and replaced him with an executive committee of seven, including, for the first time, a chief financial officer. With the introduction of WordPerfect for Windows, the company has been regaining customers. More hurt than bitter, Peterson tells his version of WordPerfect's story. Recommended for management, small business, and computer collections. David Rouse