I couldn’t believe it! A room on the 10th floor of the LBJ library with only a handful of students and the founder of Adobe! It was a barely advertised talk that was setup by the Professor of a LBJ school class who worked at Xerox (the PARC) with Charles Geschke (or Chuck as he asked to be called).
It was a fantastic talk and I’m sure it would have been packed if anyone in the Austin business community had known it was happening.
He talked about his involvement in ARPA (precursor to the internet) back in its early days. His invention of the early pdf while working at Xerox, and their rejection of his idea (they actually loved it but told him that the Xerox way was to take 7 years to get a product to market).
He took his idea and started his own company partnering early on with Steve Jobs (who tried to buy his company multiple times) before Apple was successful. He talked about trying to market to Microsoft only to discover that Jobs and Gates had partnered secretly to put Adobe out of business and how Adobe survived.
He walked through the Adobe Way and how he took his markets Global and turned the type face industry digital.
A great talk and a great find for the LBJ school.
ps. Adobe was named for a creek that ran through a local California area that Geschke randomly found on the map when trying to come up with a name.
[...] Here is the link to the blog: http://nadmaharg.com/2008/09/24/founder-of-adobe-systems-speaks-at-austin/ [...]