Taro's Blog

Tim Gill started Quark, Inc. in his apartment in 1981 with a $2,000 loan from his parents. Tim developed Word Juggler and Catalyst. His attorney introduced Farhad “Fred” Ebrahimi as a business partner. In 1986, Fred bought the half share of the company with $100,000 and became the CEO. The duo of the softspoken openly-gay genius programmer and wealthy successful businessman who migrated from Iran in the late 1970s, split their duties. Tim developed great products, and Fred oversaw the day-to-day business. It turned out to be the win-win formula!

In 1987, QuarkXPress 1.0 was released for the Macintosh computer. In 1989, the product incorporated an application programming interface (API) namelled XTensions which allows third-party developers to create custom add-on features to the desktop application. That was the key to success. An XTension can compensate the missing feature of the product. There was the list of must-have XTensions for the graphic artests and commercial printers. In 1992, the first Windows version of the product was released.

In the early 1990s, QuarkXPress surpassed Adobe PageMaker and became the market leader in Desktop Publishing software. In 1994, I joined Quark, and relocated to Dener, CO. My first role was a Developer Support at DeveloperLand (the 3rd party developer support team). I was expected to support Japanese developers. That was my second “dream-job-becomes-true”.

As my career grew, I moved to the East Asian team, the Quality Assurance team, and the Research & Development team within the company. In 1997, I borrowed a bank loan and purchased a condominium in the Downtown Denver area. I also applied for the Green Card. “Life’s Been Good” to me so far.

Good things did not last. The dot-com bubble burst in 2000 changed all of that. My H-1B visa expired in June 2000. My permanent residency application was still in process. Quick Fred laid me off. All of a sudden, I had to sell my condo, forgo the Green Card, and move out of the country within 30 days or so. That was one of my “the shxx hit the fan” moments. So, I decided to move to Taiwan to learn Chinese.

Well, actually, that was not accurate. The dot-com bubble burst did not cause my layoff. In 1997-98, I knew the ship was sinking. It was my fault. I did not jump off to another boat at the right time. I waited too long. At that time, Adobe was openly and aggressively recruiting the R&D engineers from Quark to develop the next generation of their PageMaker, the so-called “Quark Killer”. Mergie’s gone, Will’s gone, and Mike’s gone. I was shocked that our PDF guru had resigned and joined Adobe. The PDF engine was the heart of the product. That was the “nails to the coffin” moment. Meanwhile, Fred did not care and was busy opening an R&D Facility in Bangalore, India. He probably thought all the knowledge in the Denver R&D team could be perfectly transferred to their Indian counterpart.

I could not jump off in the late 1990s because my Green Card was not ready. I saw my colleague from South Korea quickly apply for his Green Card as soon as he started at Quark around 1995. He was smart, I was dumb. See, I joined the company 1 year earlier than he did. But I waited 3 years and finally applied for it in 1997. On the contrary, the smart Korean engineer got a Green Card before the dot-com bubble burst and left Quark for a better job. I learned my lesson. When I moved to Australia in 2015 with a business visa, I quickly applied for permanent residency. (I applied for the Permanent Visa in June 2015, and was granted 3 months later).

Why was Adobe so aggressive in stealing programmers from Quark in 1998? It was because Fred pixxed off them in 1997 by publicly proposing to acquire Adobe. It was an insult. I thought it was a joke. But Fred appeared to be serious. CNN interviewed him. He was the man of the moment. In the end, Adobe InDesign 1.0 was released in 1999. It became the Quark Killer in the 2000s and took back the market. A sweet revenge. The justice served.

Last but not least, I wanted to mention David Blatner. In the 1990s, he was a famous independent Quark evangelist and trainer. When I was an acting Product Manager of QuarkXPosure (Photoshop killer, if it were released), for the Japanese market, for a very short time (like a few days to a week or two?), in 1996, I traveled to Yokohama, Japan, for a Quark event. There, I met David. He was a very smart guy! After the graphic artists and commercial printers unanimously switched from QuarkXPress to Adobe InDesign for their typesetting and page layout, in the early 2000s, David also switched his side. As you guessed, he became a successful independent InDesign evangelist and trainer!