Mitch Kapor was born on November 1,1951 in Brooklyn, New York, USA to Jesse and Phoebe Kapor of Long Island, heir to their cardboard box business, Corrugated Paper Products Inc. of Brooklyn. He graduated from Yale University in 1971 with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. While at Yale he studied psychology, linguistics, and computer science, specializes in Cybernetics. After graduating Yale, Kapor drifted between jobs ranging from Disc Jockey to stand-up comic.
At the age of 25 Kapor moved to Switzerland for what had been advertised as an "Enlightenment-or-Bust" course. This course included as much as 14 hours a day of meditation and was intended to teach him how to levitate. Needless to say it never worked and Kapor soon discovered that this is not where he would find the enlightenment he had been looking for.
In 1978, he completed a Master’s program in Psychology at Beacon College. He also worked at a mental institution as an attendant doing what he described as, "the psychic equivalent of emptying bedpans."
In 1978 He began to attend MIT's Sloan School of Business Management in a vain attempt at a Master’s in Business Administration, but he soon dropped out.
Several months later, Kapor met the inventors of Visi-Calc, the first spreadsheet software available. He and a partner joined forces to create Visi Plot. Kapor had created his first successful business.
In 1981, Kapor and partner Honathan Sachs, decided to try and raise capital to start another company (Lotus). He wanted to create an application that was similar to Visi Calc and Visi Plot combined, but would also have other features.
In 1983, Lotus Development Corp. released its first product, Lotus 123. This product was also the first to provide the user with on-screen help, and come with a tutorial on disk.
In 1983 there were only a few giants in the software industry. Certainly Kapor was equivalent to the likes of Bill Gates of Microsoft and Steve Jobs of Apple<>
In 1987 Mitch Kapor bailed out of Lotus. Kapor is quoted as having said, "I just bailed. I hated it and I hated myself. I liked starting things, the hands-on aspect of it. But the job was different now. I couldn't handle the responsibility and I didn't like the power. I said to myself, 'Quit, go find out what you want to do with your life.
In 1990 Kapor returning to the business world, he started On Technology Corp. and served as its President and Chief Executive Officer for three years. On Technology's goal was to produce software that would work with and support networks. It took several years for it to become successful.
In 1990 Kapor and Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow created the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a non-profit interest group devoted to defending the civil liberties of hackers. It initially provided legal support for several hackers who had been caught illegally accessing certain computer systems. He once said, “I look for companies doing development that can get some kind of sustainable advantage, so they can survive the inevitable competition that will come if they have got something good. In particular, the longer I do this, the more convinced I am that having a smart, aggressive, and experienced management team to complement terrific ideas and technology is incredibly important."
How have Mitch Kapors contributions shaped the computer industry of today? Certainly Kapor contributed much towards making computers easier to use and more useful with his Lotus 123. The features included in the product such as online help, and a customer support department set the standard other software makers had to live up to. Now Kapor is working hard to identify new ideas and technologies that will shape our future by helping struggling young technology businesses with his investment firm. Kapor has, time and time again, proved that he has what takes to be successful. As a businessman he created three profitable companies. He has created EFF, the most notable public interest group working for the civil liberties of people in information technology. In every one of his experiences he has seen the future years ahead of the competition and taken advantage of it. While Kapor might not be as notable as Bill Gates, he certainly deserves recognition as one of the most successful innovators in the computer software industry.
In 2001 Kapor founded the Open Source Applications Foundation, where he is now working on a modern personal information manager using open source tools and methods. The group is working on Chandler.
In 2003 Kapor has been the Chair of the Mozilla Foundation. He also co-founded and is on the board of the Level Playing Field Institute, a 501c (3) dedicated to fairness in education and workplaces. Kapor is also Chair of the Board of Directors of Linden Lab, a San Francisco-based company which created the popular virtual world Second Life.
Kapor is an Adjunct Professor at the School of Information at UC Berkeley.
Mitch Kapor is known for being the best for promoting the first spreadsheet VisiCalc and later founding Lotus, where he was instrumental in developing the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet. He left Lotus in 1986. He is also a pioneer of the personal computing industry, and an entrepreneur, investor and advocate for social change. As Partner at Kapor Capital and the Kapor Center for Social Impact, Mitch, along with his wife Freada Kapor Klein, invests in social impact tech startups that narrow gaps in opportunity and access for underrepresented communities and eliminate barriers to full participation across the tech ecosystem.
Mitch Kapor made many contributions to the computer industry through Lotus, On Technology, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He has been a leading figure in the computer industry for 20 years. He was the founder and CEO of Lotus Development Corporation and the designer of Lotus 1-2-3.
In addition to his roles at Kapor Capital and Kapor Center for Social Impact, Mitch currently serves on the Board of the Level Playing Field Institute, whose mission is to enhance equal opportunity in education and the workplace, and sits on the Advisory Board of Generation Investment Management, a firm whose vision is to embed sustainability into the mainstream capital markets.
As one of Kapor quotation said that “Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant” my opinion to this is, Kapor is right because every now and then we/the human being is dependent now to Internet especially in our daily life. We can’t live without it, it serves as our vitamin. Vitamin makes as stronger and more flexible. Just like the Internet doing now.
Another quotation is that “What is design? It’s where you stand with a foot in two worlds – the world of technology and the world of people and human purposes – and you try to bring the two together” it’s like living in two human situation were the other one is poor and other is rich. Were the poorest act as a human purposes and the riches act as a technology. Make sense right?
I choose Mitch Kapor because he is similar to Bill Gates and Steve Job they drop out but then they are successful to their chosen career. They prove that not because you did not finish your education you will become Useless/not successful in life, it’s up to you if you want to stay from where you stand (Way of living). Practically saying that I never I heard his name before that he existed not until now.
www.thocp.net/biographies/kapor_schneider_mitch.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MITCH_KAPOR
www.kapor.com/bio/