In 1985 a new software category (currently called CRM for Customer Relationship Management) started up with the release of a software product called TeleMagic, for the PC.
It was designed primarily for salespeople to use in their work, to keep track of the many details of the selling process, to produce letters, proposals, dial the phone, send faxes (remember those?), and interface with the company’s accounting software to do order entry, billing, accounts receivable, and inventory control.
It seems so obvious now, but such a product did not exist in 1985. And it seemed obvious to Michael McCafferty too, so he programmed it and built a company to sell the software.
Customers loved the software, and some are still using the software 30+ years later. They just can’t find anything better for their needs.
One of the early users of TeleMagic was a guy named, let’s call him Steve, running a business in, let’s settle on Seattle, and he credits the product as a very important tool in building a successful business.
There was one specific feature of TeleMagic which was a favorite of many customers. It was a screen popup that would occur whenever your keyboard went idle for about 2 minutes. The popup would be a quotation intended to lift the spirits of the user, and motivate them to persevere. It was called “Food For Thought”.
Fast forward 30+ years and Steve’s business had programmed their own software for their CRM special needs, so TeleMagic, and that great pop-up Food For Thought were no longer used.
When a family member needed help recently, Steve remembered how those quotes in TeleMagic might help others. But his software packaging and diskettes were gone, and even if they could be located, there were no machines that could read those old floppy disks. What to do?
Google, of course. And with enough googling and perseverance, Steve located the guy who wrote the TeleMagic product, Michael McCafferty, at 12:32 in the morning of January 3rd, 2016, to see if those quotations might still be around. Mike put the word out to the remaining TeleMagic dealers. Within hours, the dealer in Sweden found his disks and ran them on an ancient PC, found the quotes and emailed them along to Mike who emailed them to Steve at around 4 in the morning. Needless to say, Steve was impressed…
In a subsequent meeting, Mike mentioned to Steve that the Food For Thought feature was a favorite of users, and a favorite of his to do as the programmer. He said he had often thought of doing an app for the smartphone that would replicate that feature from so long ago. Steve thought that was a good idea and wanted to help make it a reality.
From that decision, a team was formed, and the adventure began…