But who are these mystical gurus? Who are these pedagogues who light the path of personal computing for the rest of us to follow? Do they surround themselves with crystal balls, tarot cards and meaningful pieces of unused computer hardware for inspiration?

And what are the qualifications for becoming a computer guru? If you write a computer book, are you suddenly a guru? If you write a computer program, does that make you a guru? And what about money? Do you have to make a fortune in order to be considered a real computer guru?

With all of that in mind, let's talk about Peter Norton. He is a forty-something Southern Californian who (according to those who know him) generally maintains a laid-back and relaxed kind of attitude. He has short, but not too short, blond hair which is graying at the temples. He's usually pictured with his shirt sleeves rolled and with his tie loosened. He often poses for pictures with his arms folded across his chest, and with his half smile creeping across his face. For all practical purposes, he appears to be an ordinary, average guy.

Don't let that image fool you. Peter Norton is a computer guru.


The Makings Of A Guru

The story goes that Peter Norton worked in the aerospace industry back in the late 1970s, but he lost his job when Boeing, McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed all made severe cutbacks. To pay the bills, Norton took contract computer programming jobs.

One day, Norton accidentally deleted an important file, a common-enough error. Instead of re-entering all the information, however, he thought he'd write a computer program that would recover the lost data. (Some people are really motivated.) That program not only rescued the lost file, but its framework also eventually helped make Peter Norton very rich, and very famous.

Norton called his program the Norton Utilities. Utilities are programs designed to perform maintenance chores on computers. They are designed to ``cure'' narrowly focused computer problems, like backing up your files for storage or recovering disk and file contents when they have accidentally been erased.

This was in 1982, and Norton marketed the program (primarily on foot) through the one-man software publishing company he formed, Peter Norton Computing Inc. (PNCI). The next year, PNCI released the second version of Norton Utilities, which was actually made up of several smaller programs that rescued ``lost'' files and disk contents.

``He did users groups a whole lot in the beginning, and that's originally how he did a lot of his own p.r. [public relations], was by doing these users groups. And what he would do is he would leave behind these little pamphlets on technical notes at users groups meetings and also at computer stores,'' explains Brad Kingsbury, chief architect for Symantec's Peter Norton Group.

``In fact, that's how he got into the book writing stuff. What happened is that one of the publishers for Brady Books saw his pamphlets that he was leaving out, and the publisher saw that he could write about a technical subject. And the publisher called him and asked him if he wanted to write a book,'' says Kingsbury.

The ``book writing stuff,'' as Kingsbury calls it, was Norton's first computer book, ``Inside The IBM PC,'' published by Brady Books in 1983. Norton had been writing well-received monthly columns since 1982 for PC Magazine and PC Week magazines as well. ``Inside the IBM PC'' was an immediate best seller and is considered today to be a computer classic.

Says Kingsbury, ``The style he used to write, it's kind of like he was teaching people about computers, but not teaching it to them like they were stupid or anything. And because he was there in front of the users every single month in the magazines, and every time they went into the book store, people saw a lot of technical stuff written by this same person. There's no doubt about it, the monthly columns and the books were our best p.r. ever.''

In 1984, PNCI reached $1 million in revenue, and version 3.0 of the Norton Utilities was released. ``At the time, Peter had three clerical people working for him,'' says Kingsbury. ``He was doing all of the software development, all of the book writing, all of the manual writing and running the business. The only thing he wasn't doing was stuffing the packages. He was a one-man show.''

The blueprints for the building of a computer guru had been drawn.

Kingsbury believes that at this point, Norton realized the potential for the utilities software market and so he made a commitment to build the business. ``And that's one of the reasons why he hired me,'' explains Kingsbury.


First Mate Kingsbury

``I actually joined Peter back in 1985, and before that, I was involved with a group called Blue Chip Software. If you remember back in '84 and '85, a lot of companies at that time were going out of business and people thought there was going to be this big consolidation and everything,'' Kingsbury says.

``So Blue Chip Software was having some financial troubles, and I went looking for a job, and I sent my resume off to Peter Norton Computing Inc. And at that time, he was looking for an employee, so I joined him.

``My job responsibility was to develop the software, and that's what I did. I just developed the programs, and that was pretty much the last day Peter programmed.''

The PNCI staff was up to five now. Peter did his writing, managing and marketing from the den of his home. The three clerical people worked upstairs and Kingsbury's desk was the kitchen table. Because they operated out of Norton's home, the hours worked were largely determined by the members of the Norton household.

Kingsbury remembers, ``You knew it was time to leave when Eileen, Peter's wife, started making dinner. And I just scooted my stuff over to one side of the kitchen table at the end of the day, and they'd eat dinner. And then when I'd come back the next day, I'd scoot my stuff back out a little bit.''

At that time, primarily ``technical'' people were using personal computers. And by the very nature of its application, Norton Utilities was a ``technical'' product. Programmers and high-end computer users were using the product. Computer users and computer companies now realize the importance of good technical support, but in 1985, it was in many ways still a novelty (especially for the PNCI staff).

``In those days, the way we handled tech support was that one of the clerical people was in charge of all the questions from nine to five. And this person was a non-technical person,'' laughs Kingsbury. Because the clerical worker in charge of technical support wasn't able to answer all the questions, users with particularly complex questions were told to call back between twelve noon and 1 p.m.

``At that point, I would jump on the phone and answer all the technical questions during my lunch hour. So all these people were scrambling to call between twelve and one in order to get some competent technical support.'' Kingsbury concludes, ``We didn't have the greatest tech support system.''


The Norton Niche

In late 1985, Norton hired a business manager to take care of the day-to-day operations of PNCI. According to Kingsbury, Norton never was a gung-ho manager type. Instead, his leadership role at PNCI was more as founder and inspirational leader.

``Peter Norton has always been a laid-back person. His whole philosophy, and I've heard him quote this many times, was, `We're going to do this business stuff while it's fun.' So that was our primary focus that first it has to be fun, and second it has to make money.

``I never knew what would happen if we didn't make any money and it was still fun. It probably wouldn't have been too fun at that point, especially for Peter,'' says Kingsbury. ``But he wasn't out to create the next greatest generation of software, he wasn't out to make a whole lot of money. It was really to have fun and he enjoyed the flexibility of not having to work under someone else.''

PNCI reached $5 million in revenues in 1986. It published several other software packages but, according to Kingsbury, the Norton Utilities was still PNCI's cash cow. Utility software was gaining wider acceptance in the microcomputer industry as users realized the advantages of data recovery.

When one has just ``lost'' an extremely important file, it can be difficult to remain calm. In fact, it's conceivable that one might even enter into a state of panic. PNCI's technical support improved as more and more business people started using the product (and consequently, as more and more business people accidentally deleted important files, like sales forecasts and budget projections). Many of these users were too upset to even read the manual, and PNCI's technical support line provided the human reassurance that people often require when working with machines.


The Private Sector

In 1987, PNCI reached $11 million in revenues and was ranked by Softletter as the 32nd largest independent software company. Kingsbury recalls what it was like working for such a profitable, yet private, company.

``Our company has always been self-financed, so we never had any venture capital, and we never had any outside funding. Now the down side of that is, of course, that we couldn't do a lot of things that other companies were doing. We couldn't take any chances with any products.''

Because there wasn't as much research and development money available as there might have been with a publicly-held company, Norton products' life cycles were often longer than other software. Kingsbury, with two other programmers, was in charge of planning the products and their designs. He recalls, ``Basically, we were running the R and D [research and development] portion of the company.''

The three programmers worked together on the development of one product at a time. Since they all concentrated on turning out that one product, further work on the other products was temporarily halted. Kingsbury says, ``All of our concentration was from product to product. So instead of coming out with a product every nine months, it took us maybe a year and a half. And it was complete product development [without market research] with the assumption that this product was going to make it, no matter what.''

Kingsbury suggests that one of the good things about working for a small, private company is that it can be easier to maintain quality internally. ``We've always maintained that quality is not an issue. Quality is a given, and you don't mess with quality. You can mess with features, you can mess with schedules, and you can mess with the number of people working on the product. But quality is always a given.''

So PNCI maintained an image of quality. And Norton continued to gain recognition for himself and his company with his technically-edged book- (he eventually wrote over a dozen) and column-writing projects.

As Kingsbury explains, however, Norton was very cautious about the utility software market's image within the microcomputer industry.

``He could have been more aggressive about building the business, but one of his philosophies about staying in this utility niche was to stay in the niche. He didn't ever want to attract big league players. He didn't want a Borland or a Microsoft to take over his little business. He wanted to keep it private because he liked that sense of control. He had this fear that once the big guys could see how much money could be made in the utility business, they'd be out to enter it.''

While Norton crawled in-between the holes and tried not to attract too much attention, his company grew and prospered.

The guru image had become etched in stone.


In Pursuit Of Publicity

By 1988, Norton had ceased writing his magazine columns. His products were winning utility awards hand over fist, and Norton himself was named Entrepreneur of the Year by Arthur Young and Venture. PNCI reached $15 million in revenues and was ranked 136th among Inc.'s list of the 500 fastest-growing private companies in America.

Norton started talk within the company about going public. Excitement filled the air as policies were proposed to make stock options available to PNCI employees. In the next few years, however, PNCI went through several executive turnovers as management was hired to try to prepare the company to go public.

The company continued to make money ($25 million in revenues in 1989), Norton products continued to win awards, and Norton's books combined had sold more than one million copies and had been translated into 14 languages.

But, as Kingsbury explains, PNCI didn't really have the opportunity to go public. ``We didn't have the sales force, and we just didn't have the people in place who could take us public. We were getting lots of negative reviews in the press about our executive turnover. And also, Central Point Software's PC Tools [Norton's competitor in the utility market] was biting on our heels.''

To the outside world, it appeared as if Norton wasn't doing anything with PNCI. Research and development funding wasn't as readily available as it would be with a public company. New product introduction lagged and marketing was very low. Says Kingsbury, ``At the time, the goal was to internally make the company look as profitable as possible in order to try and go public. So we weren't investing in new technology, we weren't investing new products.''

PNCI was busy creating international versions of Norton products and establishing international offices. But it wasn't enough to take Peter Norton Computing Inc. public on its own.


New Decade, New Union

In August of 1990, PNCI merged with Symantec Corp., a software company which had grown rapidly since its 1982 debut because of the success of its own products and a series of software acquisitions.

Kingsbury reflects, ``The merger came as a surprise, no doubt about it. It came as a real surprise. Because first of all, there was no merger talk in the air at all. And up until then, Peter had talked about going public for the longest period of time.

``There was a lot of relief once we joined Symantec. For one, we instantly became a public company so there was the possibility of getting some real money through stock options. And also, there was the sense that now we didn't have to put on this cover. Now we could actually develop products and compete against our competition, and we had deep pockets to do so.''

Symantec publishes a broad line of business and productivity software. They did publish utilities software for Apple Corp.'s Macintosh, and so did PNCI. But this was the only product overlap.

There was some employee overlap, and about one-third of PNCI's staff was laid off after the merger. ``There was some disappointment because these were the same people who were working toward the same goal as you at the time, and that was to make the company go public,'' says Kingsbury.

The industry gossip surrounding the merger was very positive, however. Symantec retained the technical people working for PNCI, and according to Kingsbury, both companies felt like it was a good union.


Marital Bliss

The union has, indeed, been prosperous for both parties. Kingsbury says, ``Before the merger, we were running at about $40 million per year. Since the merger, we're running at about $160 million per year. And that's just our group. Those aren't the figures for all of Symantec. So our group has quadrupled our sales, we've been very successful.''

And Symantec appears to be open to the refocusing of its niche in the microcomputer industry. The press used to tout Symantec as a project management and database company. Now you will almost always see Symantec referred to as a utility company. ($160 million can be pretty persuasive.) Kingsbury reflects, ``Utilities is one of the fastest-growing areas in the software industry. We've been under utilized in the past.''

The Peter Norton Group division of Symantec continues to focus on leading-edge technology and quality products. As Kingsbury suggests, it's easier to be on the leading edge of technology when money is available to do just that. ``You know, there were a lot of things we were deprived of in the early days. We weren't able to produce grand new products. All of our products were [developed] by teams of one or two people because that's all we could afford.

``Right after the merger, one of the first things Symantec did was to dramatically invest in development. We now have 10 people working on Norton Utilities, which allows us to do technical things we couldn't do before. So in a sense, it gave us more flexibility to explore different areas. And that's one of the things that keeps me going here. Basically, Symantec is very open about allowing people to explore their ideas.''

Today, Kingsbury ``plays'' with new technologies and ideas. He believes in Symantec because it isn't a marketing-driven company. It is technology-driven. The company is headed by Gordon E. Eubanks Jr. who is, in Kingsbury's words, ``a technical guy.'' Kingsbury continues, ``When a person goes in and buys our product, he expects to get the best because that's where our reputation is. That, I think, is the key to our group.''


Guru Norton

You may be wondering what happened to Peter Norton after the PNCI/Symantec merger. After all, this story was supposed to be about him.

At the time of the merger, Norton owned about 30% of PNCI. (Some employees had stock options they didn't know about until after the merger actually took place.) He has since diversified his investments, and now owns about 11% of the Peter Norton Group. This 11% ownership adds up to a more-than-$100-million investment in the company, which is a large portion of his net worth.

Norton sits on Symantec's board of directors, and he still makes appearances for the company at users groups and computer trade shows. Kingsbury suggests that Norton will always have a very strong presence within the company for several reasons. ``As long as he has $100 million, he'll probably stick around. And he's a spokesperson. But besides that, his name's on everything. If we come out with something that's not so hot, it would be a personal reflection on him.'' And certainly, in order to maintain his guru-like image, Peter Norton needs to maintain an image of quality computer products.

Kingsbury admits though, Norton doesn't come into the office very much anymore. He now devotes his time to his family, civic affairs, philanthropy and art collecting. In fact, as collectors, the Nortons have accumulated a private collection of more than 500 works over the past several years, focusing on young, emerging Southern California artists.

``He has a lot of other interests at this time,'' explains Kingsbury. ``Contemporary art is the big thing with him these days. And also, I believe that he's getting into a lot of real estate stuff. I think he's having a heckuva' lot of fun right now. And after all, that always was the original company philosophy.''

The eighties saw the emergence of Peter Norton, computer guru. The nineties may very well see the emergence of Peter Norton, art guru. With a touch like King Midas', it will be interesting to see what type of guru Norton becomes in the new century. Until then, we can only hold our breath and speculate.

by Gillian Coolidge