10 Facts About MicroPro International

MicroPro International Corporation was an American software company founded in 1978 in San Rafael, California.

MicroPro International founded MicroPro International Corporation in September 1978 and hired John Robbins Barnaby as programmer, who wrote a word processor, WordMaster, and a sorting program, SuperSort, in Intel 8080 assembly language.

MicroPro International began selling the product, now renamed WordStar, in June 1979.

An exhausted Barnaby left the company in March 1980, but due to WordStar's sophistication, the company's extensive sales and marketing efforts, and bundling deals with Osborne and other computer makers, MicroPro International's sales grew from in 1979 to million in fiscal year 1984, surpassing earlier market leader Electric Pencil.

MicroPro International additionally scored a contract with the Kaypro Corporation to have its WordStar, MailMerge, CalcStar, DataStar, and SuperSort applications included with all of Kaypro's bundled computer packages in April 1984.

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MicroPro International was replaced by E Glen Haney, previously the vice president of strategic planning at Sperry Corporation, under which he had spearheaded Sperry Link—an office productivity software suite of Sperry's own—which Haney said afforded him experience in the microcomputer market.

MicroPro International, which did not have a corporate sales program until December 1983, developed a poor reputation among customers.

Almost since its birth 4 years ago, MicroPro International has had a seemingly unshakable reputation for three things: arrogant indifference to user feedback ; possession of one of the more difficult-to-use word processors on the market; and possession of the most powerful word processor available.

MicroPro International's replacements canceled the promising office suite Starburst, purchased a WordStar clone, and used it as the basis of WordStar 2000, released in December 1984.

MicroPro International sold the application separately, as well as bundling it with InfoStar as part of the InfoStar+ package.