Gensoft -- Software Marketer Starts Company With Database Of Ideas

-- Name:Larry Foster

-- Age: 45

-- Position: President, genSoft

-- Goal: Rethinking software market with an eye toward exploiting good but poorly marketed programs.

-- Quote: ``There's a lot of superb programs out there which just aren't reaching the people who could use them.''

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Larry Foster was understandably a little startled when Microsoft called with a last-minute invitation for his fledgling company, genSoft Development Corp. in Bellevue, to join the Windows-OS/2 booth at the Las Vegas Comdex show three weeks ago.

But this time, he didn't need the weekend to think it over.

In a way the invitation was a tribute to an individual whose name is synonymous with software marketing strategy. Not many month-old start-ups with only one product - still in development, at that - get personal Las Vegas invites from the big boys in Redmond.

But Foster, 45, is a long-term player with impressive credentials gilded by stints at SoftSel (now Merisel) and Micro D (today Ingram Micro D), both nationwide chain vendors based in Southern California, and for the past five years as vice president of merchandising at Egghead Discount Software in Issaquah, which he left to found genSoft.

``I got into this business 10 years ago,'' is the way he puts it, ``And this business is about 10 years old.''

Foster was living comfortably in Glendale as head of inventory control and product management for a 40-store Southern California record chain when he got a Friday afternoon phone call asking if he'd like to go to work for SoftSel.

``I told them no,'' he recalled in an interview at genSoft's new headquarters across from Factoria Square in Bellevue. ``But over the weekend I had second thoughts. Most of the craziness that had drawn me to the record industry was gone, and I guess I was looking for something new.''

On Monday morning he called and asked if he could drop by for a look.

``It was the most electric, exciting atmosphere I'd ever been in,'' Foster said. ``The phone was blaring and people were running back and forth yelling out orders. It literally blew my mind that any industry could be that electrifying.''

In those days, software came in plastic baggies - shrink-wrap wasn't being used yet - with a crude mimeographed manual and some floppy diskettes. There were no such things as marketing strategy, target audiences, vertical or horizontal integration.

Most vendors didn't even use computers for such can't-do-without tasks today as accounts payable and receivable, inventory tracking and budget forecasting. You just sold, sold, sold.

Today, PC marketing is a far different story. To introduce and spread the word about its new Windows 3.0 program last May, Microsoft budgeted $10 million.

But Foster thinks there's still room for refinement in marketing software, which led him to start genSoft.

It's a risky time to be casting out on one's own - money is getting tighter and daily headlines talk about an uncertain economy. But industry observers say if anyone can make a go of it, Foster fills the bill.

``Larry's a Renaissance man with a good vision of this industry,'' says Matt Griffin, Egghead's vice president for operations. ``At Egghead he was a magnet for innovative ideas, and I expect he'll continue that pattern in his new venture.''

Microsoft's invitation had to do with genSoft's first product, a database language compiler known as Dbfast, being revamped for Windows. When issued in January, it will allow programmers to adapt thousands of dBase applications to run under Windows, which with 1.5 million copies shipped represents a huge potential market.

dBase, manufactured by Ashton-Tate, is the standard database software for personal computers, with more than 700,000 registered copies in use. However, a Windows version has not yet appeared, and database applications in general for Windows are scarce.

But Dbfast is just the first step in Foster's new migration. At Egghead, Foster, who jokes that he suffers anxiety attacks if he's more than three feet away from a chalkboard, gained a legendary reputation for ``Larrygrams'' - unique (and some joked mystifying) diagrams in which he attempted to explain particularly subtle points.

Foster, a former Illinois high school wrestling champ who graduated at the top of his 1971 class at the Illinois Institute of Technology's Design Institute, has impeccable design credentials and believes in classic Bauhaus philosophy.

`` `Form follows function' is permanently imbedded in my ROM,'' he says, referring figuratively to the computer term Read Only Memory used to designate unerasable programming.

In marketing terms, Foster is using his design credentials for everything from rethinking packaging to improving the visual appeal of the product. Again, his first example is Dbfast: The box will open up into a quasi-book stand capable of holding an open spiral-bound manual upright for reference purposes.

A small trick, but a neat one. One reason manuals are so seldom used is that they won't stay open (spiral binding takes care of that) and, even if placed flat on a desk, are difficult to read or access.

But genSoft's biggest impact could well be rethinking the software market throughout, Foster says. It's a direction he began to take in his final year at Egghead, where he targeted half a dozen new software programs for Project Embryo, a special Egghead promotion.

``There's a lot of great software out there which just hasn't been properly handled,'' he says. To illustrate, he combines a ``Larrygram'' with ``Foster's scale'' - a diagram showing software peaks and valleys, with peaks represented by large-selling applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, utilities, languages.

``Mission: To (re)discover, (re)design or develop products that will fill the unexploited categories that surround the `high ground,' '' reads the legend to Foster's diagram.

Foster won't yet discuss which products he is helping to fit into those ``unexploited categories.'' But several are local, he says: ``We're lucky to live in a region that is bursting with programming creativity.''

For now, he and partner Byron McCann, genSoft's chief operating officer, and a handful of new employees are scouting, surveying the scene and trolling for opportunities. Some will involve new-product development, some will involve acquisitions of existing products, some will be limited to redesign and marketing strategy.

``When I left Egghead, I think people expected me to go off to a mountaintop and come back with pockets full of venture capital but no products,'' he says. ``But the people who succeed in this business have great ideas and great products. That's our ultimate goal.''

Profile appears weekly in the Business Monday section of The Seattle Times.