[7] In 1979 it released VisiCalc, which would be so successful that in 1982 the company was renamed VisiCorp Personal Software, Inc. Bill Gates came to see Visi On at a trade show, and this seems to be what inspired him to create a windowed GUI for Microsoft.

VisiCorp was larger than Microsoft at the time, and the two companies entered negotiations to merge, but could not agree on who would sit on the board of directors.

Microsoft Windows when it was released included a wide range of drivers, so it could run on many different PCs, while Visi On cost more, and had stricter system requirements.

[8] Early alumni of this company included Ed Esber, who would later run Ashton-Tate, Bill Coleman, who would found BEA Systems, Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Software and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Rich Melmon, who would co-found Electronic Arts, Bruce Wallace, author of Asteroids in Space, and Brad Templeton, who would found early dot-com company ClariNet and was the director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation from 2000 to 2010.

The magazine wrote that "VisiCorp's auspicious climb and subsequent backslide will no doubt become a How Not To primer for software companies of the future, much like Osborne Computer's story has become the How Not To for the hardware industry."