VisiCorp

Dan Fylstra and Peter Jennings started Personal Software in 1976, selling among other things the chess program MicroChess. In 1979 they began publishing VisiCalc, written by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston at Software Arts. It was the first real reason for office workers to buy an Apple II, and in 1982 the publisher renamed itself after its hit.

Then everything went wrong at once. The money went into the graphical desktop Visi On, which needed expensive hardware and shipped in 1983 just as nobody wanted it. Publisher and authors sued each other over VisiCalc while Lotus 1-2-3 took the market. The remains were sold in 1984, and Lotus bought Software Arts the following year and killed VisiCalc.