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Review | Founding and Growing Adobe Systems, Inc

July 13, 2020

Founding and Growing Adobe Systems, Inc.

这篇论文记录了 Adobe 发展的主要历程,摘录几个重要的节点

  • 两位创始人 John E. Warnock 和 Charles Geschke 当年在 Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) 都致力于设计 office of the future
  • Warnock 和 Geschke 开发了命名为 Interpress 的打印机协议,但是 PARC 的管理层认为要等 Xerox 开发出支持这个协议的打印机后才能公开出去,要等 7 年,这个决策成为了压死骆驼的最后一根稻草,让 Warnock 和 Geschke 自立门户,成立 Adobe
  • Adobe 这个公司名字取自创始人 John E. Warnock 和 Charles Geschke 在 Los Altos 的家之间的一条小溪
  • 在 Macintosh 还没问世时,Steve Jobs 想要实现在 Macintosh 上使用激光打印机,但是却没有可用的打印协议,于是开价 500 万美元收购刚成立没多久的 Adobe, 但是被 Adobe 拒绝了,因为 Adobe 的创始人现在还处在早期阶段,未来的潜力还完全没体现出来。最后,Apple 以 100 万美元的架构购买了 Adobe 20% 的股份,并且提前支付了 150 万美元作为使用 PostScript 的版税
  • 后来 Adobe 将 PostScript 授权给包括 IBM 在内的众多电脑厂商和打印机厂商,1986 年的营收是 1600 万美元,1987 年的营收是 3900 万美元,1988 年的营收是 8300 万美元
  • 同时,PostScript 也成为了计算机打印的标准。在这之前,排版已经成为了封闭的行业,各个厂商只允许用户使用自己设计的字体,Adobe 通过 PostScript 连接软件、激光打印机和打印设备,让用户解除了这种依赖
  • Adobe 在文字排版领域大获成功,预示着在绘画领域也会巨大的潜力。正好 Adobe 创始人之一 John Warnock 的妻子是一名画家,经常跟 Warnock 沟通绘画的痛点,于是在 1987 年 Adobe 推出了 Illustrator
  • PhotoShop 是 Tom 和 John Knoll 兄弟二人在 512KB 的 Macintosh 开发的图片编辑工具,最开始 Adobe 只是被授权销售,在 2005 年才真正收购了 PhotoShop
  • 在 1990 年代,网络开始普及,用户经常通过网络来传输 PostScript 文件来达到文档传输的目的,但是这样有可能收到文件的人因为缺少资源而无法正常查看,而且也有安全问题,于是 Adobe 发明了 PDF, 并开发了用来编辑 PDF 的软件 Acrobat

最后还讲了些 Adobe 的企业文化,Geschke 总结了一下他们的风格:

When John and I started the company, our goal was to build a company that we would like to work at because we figured if we liked to work there, the kind of people we wanted to hire would be attracted to it as well. We also decided though that we didn’t want to write up a big book of rules of behavior and all that kind of stuff.

We said, “Look, if you’re going to work for Adobe, you have to be aware of the fact that there are several constituencies on which we depend: our employees, our management team, our customers, our vendors, our business partners, and the communities in which we work. Those constituencies are all mildly in conflict because what’s good for one is probably not as good for the others. Your job is to balance that effectively so that everybody feels like they’re getting a good deal or at least a fair deal.”

The way we enforced it is that the simple rule was, at Adobe you treat every one of the members of those constituencies the same way you would want to be treated. That’s the Adobe way. Every culture on Earth has that—it’s the Golden Rule.


Written by blankyao who lives and works in Amoy building useful things.