On Starting a Long-Term Company

Stephen Wolfram:

Well, this was 1986. And it was right at the time when personal computers were starting to get fairly powerful.

I’d been used to using all sorts of separate programs–and custom software–for things I wanted to do. But I had the idea that perhaps I could make one really general computational system that I could just use forever.

And that lots of other people would find useful too.

Well, that was what launched me on building Mathematica. I was pretty definite and determined about it.

And I knew I needed to start a company.