In Pictures: Lotus pioneers. Where are they now?

Mitch Kapor

Kapor was 32 years old when he founded Lotus 1-2-3. He had previously developed business programs for VisiCorp: VisiTrend (a statistics program) and VisiPlot (a program that generated business charts). But Kapor wanted more — he wanted a spreadsheet that would translate digits into graphs and calculate numbers at lightning speed, so he partnered with Jonathan Sachs to develop Lotus 1-2-3. Kapor raised $5 million (from investors) and, in January 1983, Lotus 1-2-3 became the No.1 software program on the planet.