- William Millard
Infobox Person
name = William H. Millard
caption =
birth_date =1932
birth_place =
occupation =
children =Barbara Logan
website =
footnotes =William "Bill" Millard was the founder of
IMS Associates , makers of theIMSAI series of computers and the electronics retailerComputerLand . He is rightly credited as the "father" of moderncomputer retailing .William H. Millard worked for
IBM and then as the head ofdata processing for the city and county ofSan Francisco . In1969 , together with his wife, Millard started a software publisher company calledSystems Dynamics , which went bankrupt in 1972.In 1973, Millard founded
IMS Associates , which is most famous forIMSAI 8080 microcomputer first shipped in late 1975. By 1977 IMSAI's product line included printers, terminals, floppy diskettes and software. To finance rapidly growing operations, IMSAI pledged 20% of its stock asconvertible note in exchange for $250,000 frominvestment firm Marriner & Co .In 1976, in partnership with
John Martin-Musumeci , IMS launched a successful computer reseller franchiseComputerLand . In 1982, ComputerLand's sales reached over $400 million and by 1984 the venture reached over $1 billion in revenue.Legal troubles from the failure of IMS, centered largely on a convertible note from the Marriner partnership that was later sold to a group of investors, led to a lawsuit in which Millard lost a substantial portion of his stake in ComputerLand. In the late 1980's Millard relinquished control of ComputerLand. In 1987, he sold ComputerLand to E.M. Warburg, Pincus & Co. for about $200 million.
He and his family moved to
Saipan where he removed himself from the public view.Sources
*http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1985/04/15/65788/index.htm
*http://www.smartcomputing.com/editorial/dictionary/detail.asp?guid=&searchtype=&DicID=19604&RefType=Encyclopedia
*http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE0D91530F93BA35754C0A96E948260Littmann, Jonathan, "One Upon a Time in ComputerLand", New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987. ISBN: 0671693921
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