In 1993, Charles Ferguson, an MIT-trained political scientist and high-tech industry consultant, had the brilliant idea of making a software tool for building online information systems. The tool, later dubbed FrontPage, was designed to be user-friendly so the nonprogrammers who were supplying on-line content could use it but sophisticated enough to provide flexibility in how to structure and present that information. Ferguson sunk his life savings into his new company, Vermeer Technologies, assembled an excellent programming team with his partner, Randy Forgaard, and raised venture capital to keep the company going. He pursued the enterprise with a mix of monomania and paranoia. When it was released in late 1995, FrontPage was far more advanced than similar products from any competitors—including Microsoft, which bought Vermeer soon after for $130 million.
A version of this article appeared in the January–February 2000 issue of Harvard Business Review.