Dan Bricklin is best known for conceiving and co-developing VisiCalc, the trailblazing electronic spreadsheet, while he was a student at the Harvard Business School. VisiCalc is widely credited with helping fuel the early rapid growth of the personal computer industry.
Throughout the years, Mr. Bricklin has served as president of Software Garden, Inc., a small consulting firm and developer of software applications that he founded in 1985. Software Garden's currently most popular product is Note Taker HD for the Apple iPad, written by Dan and first released in 2010. He is also currently CTO of Alpha Software Corporation.
From 2006 through 2011, Mr. Bricklin worked with social software company SocialText, Inc., to develop the Open Source JavaScript SocialCalc spreadsheet, stemming from work he did at Software Garden. Until early 2004, he served as CTO of Interland, Inc., after it acquired his previous company, Trellix Corporation, in 2003. Prior to founding Trellix to develop hypertext (later web site) authoring tools in 1995, he served as president of Software Garden, Inc., where he developed a variety of software programs, including the award-winning Dan Bricklin's Demo Program prototyping tool. Mr. Bricklin also co-founded Slate Corporation in 1991, a developer of application software for pen computers, as well as Software Arts in 1979, the developer of VisiCalc. Prior to forming Software Arts, he had been a market researcher for Prime Computer Inc., a senior systems programmer for FasFax Corporation, and a senior software engineer for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). In 1976. at DEC, he helped develop one of the first commercial screen-based, document-oriented word-processing systems, WPS-8, later sold on the DECmate system.
Mr. Bricklin is a founding trustee of the Massachusetts Software Council (now the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council) and has served on the boards of the Software Publishers Association and the Boston Computer Society. Mr. Bricklin has received many honors for his contributions to the computer industry from the ACM, IEEE, MIT, PC Magazine, the Western Society of Engineers, and numerous others. Mr. Bricklin holds a BS in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science from MIT and an MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. He was elected to be a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
2023 IEEE Computer Society Women of ENIAC Computer Pioneer Award Recipient
“For creating VisiCalc, the progenitor of the modern spreadsheet.”
Learn more about the Women of ENIAC Computer Pioneer Award
1996 Computer Entrepreneur Award
“For pioneering the development and commercialization of the spreadsheet and the profound changes it fostered in business and industry.”
Learn more about the Computer Entrepreneur Award
