The four were students at nearby Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute who wanted to develop an inexpensive mapping tool for the PC.

In the years prior to the IPO, Marvin served as chairman of the board, hiring the CEO and making sure he was comfortable with how the company was being managed.

Marvin insisted that the company be run on a cash flow break-even basis, but did raise a rainy-day fund of $2 million from Greylock Partners in 1989.

MapInfo hired Brian D. Owen to be the CEO in 1991, who brought in Matthew Szulik as VP of Sales and Doug Finlay as CFO.

[8] On April 19, 2007, Pitney Bowes entered into a merger agreement to acquire MapInfo Corporation for approximately $408 million in cash.

[12] On August 26, 2019, Pitney Bowes sold its software division (which includes MapInfo Professional) to Syncsort for $700 million in cash.

Originally, the intention was to create an easy-to-use software package that did not require exceedingly large amounts of computing power.