SAPIEN Technologies

The consumer software years: 1990-1997

While we were trying to rebuild our business, two of our former employees (Tracy Elmore and Alex Zeltser) who had nothing else to do, stuck around, and the four of us started working on our ?first product.? It was a language independent programming editor which we called ?ECOS? built for the Windows environment. Now, you have to remember what the PC scene was like at this time. I had been a strong Windows advocate for years and had actually done my first Windows programming on Windows 1.0 (ugh!) The rest of the world was still filled with infidels and unbelievers. Windows 3.0 was about to come out, so the tide had not yet started changing. We had the editor completed to the point where we could actually code the editor from within the editor itself. So we decided to go to our first trade show and show it off.

Heathens and infidels! The reaction we got was ?I have to write programs for Windows, but I don?t want to work IN Windows!? Out of the hundreds of people that saw our little product, we had only one person who believed in it enough to buy a copy. We had a sale for $49.00! Unfortunately, the reaction we received put a damper on our development efforts. Tracy and Alex decided to go out and get real jobs. Tracy landed in a small Macintosh company that was trying to get into Windows development. You may have heard of it. It was called Berkeley Systems, and they started the screen saver revolution.

Paul and I were doing OK, working on various programming jobs and paying the bills. We caught our first great break when Tracy recommended SAPIEN as an outside contractor with Windows experience to Berkeley Systems. We immediately started working on After Dark modules, including More After Dark and After Dark: Star Trek Edition.

SAPIEN?s reputation as a quality Windows development house began to grow. We began adding staff as we took on more and more consumer software projects.  Right around 1992, we struck a deal with a company called PixelLite to work on a vector based PrintShop like program. The owners of PixelLite were actually the guys that first created PrintShop (which was raster based), and had sold it to Broderbund. This was to be their next gen program. They had a DOS based version in the works and we agreed that a Windows version was needed. We convinced them to hire Tracy away from Berkeley System, and Tracy and I started working on what was soon to be ?InstantArtist.? (InstantArtist was originally published by Autodesk, then by Maxis under the name PrintArtist. Maxis was purchased by Sierra and PrintArtist is still published by Sierra Home.)

With such hit software under our belts, SAPIEN continued to grow in reputation and in size. From 1992-1997 we developed software and technology for many companies including Individual Software, Viacom Entertainment, Illumina Productions, and others. We also signed a 5 year commitment with Rand McNally to design and develop their first foray into the software world: TripMaker.

Alex Zeltser came back to SAPIEN for a few years to head development on TripMaker. Over the next five years, our commitment to Rand McNally evolved into three major products: TripMaker, StreetFinder, and New Millenium World Atlas. In 1997, Alex Riedel joined our staff to work on New Millenium. As our contract with Rand McNally came up for renewal that year, Paul and I decided that it was time to move into Phase 3: developing our own products. We decided to not renew our contracts, to downsize the company to an R&D staff, and fund ourselves through the development of our first product.