Tim Halvorsen, Steve Beckhardt, and Len Kawell, who joined Iris shortly afterwards in January 1985, met Ray Ozzie years before when all of them were working on the University of Illinois PLATO system.
Lotus funded development of Iris's product (then code-named simply "Notes") in exchange for a future option to purchase exclusive intellectual property, marketing, and sales rights.
After this option was exercised years later by Lotus, Iris was additionally compensated through royalties on gross product sales.
At the time of the IBM purchase, Lotus reported that Notes had approximately 2.2 million users.
In 2004, nearing the 20th anniversary of the founding of Iris Associates, IBM reported that Notes has over 110 million users.