A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,[1] in 1975 he was a founding associate editor of Byte magazine.
In 1978 he co-founded Personal Software,[2][3] and that year reviewed the Commodore PET 2001 and TRS-80 Model I for Byte while studying for an MBA at the Harvard Business School, having ordered each almost immediately after release.
[1][4] Personal Software became the distributor of a new program called VisiCalc, the first-ever computer spreadsheet.
In his marketing efforts Fylstra ran teaser ads in Byte that asked, considering electronic spreadsheets were an entirely new product category, "How did you ever do without it?
"[5] The VisiCalc-Apple connection suggested the hypothesis of the "killer app"—or the "software tail that wags the hardware dog.