Franz Inc company info on Answers.com
Friday, March 23, 2007
On #lisp the other day, msingh pointed to the Franz Inc entry in the "Encyclopedia of Company Histories" on Answers.com. Some of the information on that page is also available in Franz's own Company History page; however, since Franz is a private company, there are fewer publicly available details about the company than there would be for a public company. Here are a number of interesting tidbits that I came across in the Answers.com entry for Franz:
- Sales: $103 million (2004 est.) - this is quite an impressive figure for a Lisp company (actually, a very impressive figure for any company that makes all of it's income from a programming language product and related consulting work)!
- Incorporated: 1984 - a Lisp company that is over 20 years old and with a very high retention rate for key technical employees (again, quite impressive for a software company)!
- Employees: 43 - This was also an interesting figure. I've visited the Franz head office (very nice offices too!) in Oakland and I would have guessed that the number of employees was around half that. However, I guess it sounds about right when you take into account world-wide employees and sales staff.
- History: I knew a bit about Franz's early days (I posted about this on my blog a couple of years ago); however, the combination of the Answers.com entry and the Franz Company History page rounded out some of that detail. Guy Steele & Richard Gabriel's "The Evolution of Lisp" (uncut version) also provides a perspective on some of the early history of Franz (in the context of what else was happening in the Lisp world at the time).
