Douglas Carlston

Abstract: Douglas Carlston (commonly known as Doug Carlston) describes his education in different fields including getting a law degree from Harvard Law School, building houses (on spec), and becoming an ad hoc programmer. He began writing games programs to run on his TRS-80 and Apple II and then his brother and he started selling these programs to retail computer stores around the country. He called his company Brøderbund (which is sort of a faux Scandinavian name) and then signed a deal with SoftSell to distribute the programs on a much broader basis. Brøderbund became very successful, first with the games programs and then with a wide range of small business and personal programs for accounting and word processing. He describes how the company was a family business (with a number of his relatives involved) and how he maintained this style of operation. The company later marketed some high volume products like Print Shop and various add-ons and derivatives. He closes with reference to taking the company public in 1991.

Oral History of Douglas Carlston

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