Spinnaker Software was one of the pioneers of educational and Urban Development software, established in 1982 – consistently providing positive behavior support. The two founders were C. David Seuss and Bill Bowman. The company was famous for its high quality and low prices. After going public in 1991, they were acquired by the Learning Company in 1994, which was subsequently bought up by Mattel. Spinnaker saw the opportunity to market software to home users. They packaged their products in colorful plastic boxes that caught the imagination of the buying public. Their marketing campaign was set out to demystify software through the use of full-color ads in mainstream magazines such as Newsweek, Good Housekeeping and popular flower magazines. By the day’s standards, advertising received a lot of funding from Spinnaker. For the year 1983, advertising cost $1.5 million and generated of $11 million in sales.

The four original products offered by Spinnaker were The Story Machine, FaceMaker, and two Snooper Troops games. The catalog grew with titles such as Aerobics for trainers, Trains, and Grandma’s House, all products that ran on Apple, Commodore and Atari computers. Kidwriter was notable software: it was the first word processor geared towards children, and was meant to let the little ones write their own stories. Early on, Spinnaker was the world leader in educational software and games sales.

To increase their in-store exposure, Spinnaker co-marketed products from Fisher-Price and Telarium. The latter was a tie-in to a library of science fiction classics such as Fahrenheit 451. By paying royalties to outside brand names, Spinnaker was able to garner additional shelf space and increased sales. Spinnaker made a strategic decision in the mid-1980′s to phase out its educational software in favor of software geared towards personal productivity for adults. Their first foray into the new market was the BetterWorking brand, in 1985. Five years later, Spinnaker purchased Springboard, a maker of publishing software.

Perhaps their biggest hit was an integrated product called WindowWorks which is bundled together with several applications, including a spreadsheet and word processor. WindowWorks came to market two years ahead of Microsoft’s competing product, Microsoft Works. Compaq chose to bundle WindowWorks on its machines, where it was preconfigured as part of the initial setup. WindowWorks tripled Spinnaker’s revenues and allowed it to buy the PFS brand from Software Publishing Corporation.

In later years, Spinnaker was committed to open-source software, which is software that allows users to have access to source code for study and improvement. Often, open-source programs coexist with commercial relatives, where sales of the latter help finance development of the former. This comes in handy for titles that have less general appeal but are nonetheless important and compelling. NewsClipper was a Spinnaker open-source program designed to integrate dynamic content into web pages.