by Larry Welke (as told to Luanne Johnson)
Copyright ©1998, Luanne Johnson, All Rights Reserved
In 1970, I had been publishing the International Computer Programs Directory, a catalog
of software products, for four years. But the general perception still was that there
would never be a big market for software products. The assumption was that, except for the
systems programs provided by the computer manufacturers for free, users’ requirements
were so unique that programs would have to be custom-written for each installation in
order to be useable.
One afternoon I was in New York so I stopped in to see a guy I knew, a consultant named
Jim Stone. He worked for Quantum Sciences, a major market research firm at the time. We
went to some saloon for a drink and he said, "Are you still fooling around with that
software crap?"
And I said, "Wait a minute, wait a minute."
He said, "That's not an industry. That's not going anyplace."
I asked him to defend himself on that and he said, "Name something, name anything
that has sold a million dollars. You got a million dollars in sales then you've got a
product. There's nothing that's done that."
I said, "Bullshit. I know that there are."
So I went back to the office and counted up 29 products that had sold over a million
dollars worth. I went through the companies that listed in our directory that I knew were
having some success and I called them up and asked them how much revenue their products
had generated.
Once we had the list compiled we concluded, well, if we didn't know this, nobody else
knows it either. And we're in the business of pumping software products and the
marketplace, so it’s up to us to tell them. Let's go tell the business press. Let's
do something about it. Give these people an award and promote the hell out of it. So
that's what we did.
That program became an annual software industry event for over twenty years. We added a
$10 million award category and a $100 million award category and a $1 million in 1
category for software products that sold $1 million worth in the first year after they
were released. Today, the software industry is a multi-billion dollar industry (the third
largest in the U.S.) and the belief that it couldn’t be a viable industry seems
ridiculous in retrospect. But that belief was very real at the time and I like to think
that the ICP Million Dollar Award program had a lot to do with changing that perception.
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