technology, or even on the isolated location of its headquarters. The more likely cause was that its business plan was incompatible with seismic shifts in the computer industry. Building a full-scale, general-purpose computer company seemed to require many hundreds of millions of dollars (US) by 1990. But the killer micro revolution meant there would be a steady march of ever faster and cheaper competition. The economies inherent in microprocessors were inaccessible to startups in general, and incompatible with VLIWs, which would have required too much silicon for the densities of the time. (The first VLIW microprocessor was the Philips Life, the ancestor of today's TriMedia, delivered several years later.) Since the founding of Sun and SGI in the early 1980s, no new general-purpose computer company has succeeded without building computers for which there was an existing large software base, and none of the many minisupercomputer startup companies of the 1980s eventually succeeded. Corporate culture Multiflow was staffed by engineers, computer scientists, and other computer professionals who were attracted to the combination of a novel and challenging technology, an uphill battle, and the remarkable social experience of working in the most uniformly talented group they were ever likely to be a part of. The system was so novel that its engineering was widely expected to fail. Despite that, even though none of the employees (besides Eckdahl) had ever held senior engineering positions, Trace systems and their software were delivered on time, were robust, and exceeded their promised performance. In great part this was due to the talent level of those attracted to the company, and to the tremendous learning environment it was from the outset. Following Multiflow's closing, its employees went on to have a widespread effect on the industry. The small core group of engineers and scientists, numbering about 20, produced 4 fellows in major American computer companies (2 of whom were Eckert-Mauchly Award winners), several founders of successful startups, and leaders of major development efforts at large companies. The only nontechnical person in the core group, hired out of business school, went on to lead corporate development at a major research lab. As Multiflow grew, it continued the tradition of hiring highly talented people: as one example, the documentation writer became one of the most influential editors in computer publishing. Multiflow's effect on the computer industry was very much its people in addition to its technology. External links Book