Compaq – Paper Napkin Ideas Make a Great Business
Many great ideas are written on paper napkins. That’s exactly what happened when three men came together to create a company manufacturing portable personal computers. Leaving their jobs at Texas Instruments, Rod Camon, Jim Harris and Bill Murto each chipped in $1,000 and put their ideas on a napkin at a Houston bakery.
These ideas came to fruition in 1982. By the end of Compaq’s first year, its initial public offering exceeded $67 million on the NASDAQ. They shipped more than 53,000 laptops and set a record revenue of more than $111 million in their first year. Just a few years later, Compaq broke revenue records and was listed as the fastest company to break into the Fortune 500. They were first in the world in PC market shares in 1995, due to product expansion and to the development of various desktop computers, laptops and pen computers.
A lot happened over the next few years at Compaq. Events like being highly recognized in Forbes magazine, having deals with Radio Shack, buying DEC and the Alta Vista name. Products such as the iPAQ Pocket PC and iPAQ Home Internet Appliance were launched, and recognition as a leader in wireless technology. Compaq has also worked with Walt Disney Co., Microsoft, Starbucks, and Yahoo. HP found the success of this company very attractive and merged with Compaq in 2002, creating an $87 billion global technology company.
Products where you’ll find the Compaq brand are: notebooks, computers, portable devices, printers, digital cameras, televisions and accessories. They have also combined some products and their names with HP. These include: iPAQ GPS systems, PDAs, and PDA phones.
Compaq is also known as one of the first companies to introduce the “Build to Order” option. This allows consumers to choose from several options to create the computer that suits their personal needs. The options you can choose from are: operating systems, processor type and speed, display, memory, graphics cards, network, hard drive, CD/DVD drive, and many other accessories. These options are installed on the “base” model with the default options pr-selected. Once you have set your options, the computer is built and then shipped.
This is a great option for experienced computer users to learn what options they need to run their computer. If you’ve ever wanted something different than how computers are set up on store shelves, this option may be for you.