
Lotus 1-2-3’s success was based on a combination of great programming skills and market savvy.
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Lotus 1-2-3 would go on to become the number one best-seller computer software application of the 1980s. In a few months 1-2-3 was heading distributor Softsel Computer Products Inc.’s best-seller list and where it would stay for the next two years. Because software can be reproduced quickly after it is developed, they were able, barely, to keep up with demand.

After the new electronic spreadsheet was officially released on January 26, 1983, the company logged sales of some 60,000 copies in its first month. Soon Lotus 1-2-3 would top the sales list of all computer software. Little did Sachs know his creation would change the computer industry forever.” Nor did he know it would change the world of finance.īut that was just the start of their success. “By the time the workers started to tear down the exhibit stalls at the end of the Comdex show, Lotus had taken about $3 million in orders based on the demo alone. Lotus 1-2-3 turned out to be a big hit with the swarming exhibit crowd. But the new application was nearly as popular as Apple’s debut at the West Coast Computer Faire. With questions in his mind and an updated resume in hand, Sachs took his baby to the crowds on the Las Vegas show floor.” Lotus had begun to publicize its new spreadsheet nearly a half a year before the Comdex show and a Wall Street Journal article just before the event was particularly helpful. “It was too difficult for its intended audience, he thought, and would scare users away.

A former programmer at Data General Corp, he was apprehensive about the prospects of his new creation. He had spent nearly a year working with Mitch Kapor and his small startup company called Lotus Development Corporation on a new spreadsheet program for the recently released IBM PC.

While VisiCalc for the Apple II had shown both the viability of digital spreadsheets and the new “microcomputers,” Lotus 1-2-3 showed that spreadsheets would become indispensable for modern organizations and global digital finance. It was during the November of 1982 on the giant floor of the Comdex show in Las Vegas that Lotus 1-2-3 would first make its mark.
