FTP Software

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FTP Software was a software company incorporated in 1986 by James van Bokkelen, John Romkey (author of the MIT PC/IP package), Nancy Connor, Roxanne van Bokkelen (nee Ritchie), Dave Bridgham and several other founding shareholders. It was the first of many companies to name themselves after an Internet protocol. Their main product was PC/TCP, a full-featured, standards-compliant TCP/IP package for DOS. Initially the protocol stacks were linked into individual application executables, but by 1989 all PC/TCP applications shared a TSR kernel, which itself (initially) used built-in network interface drivers, and (later) TSR Packet Drivers.

The company had a good run, but suffered greatly from both internal and external pressures. The company had grown extremely quickly and repeatedly moved physically farther away from its roots at MIT. The technically adept founders were inexperienced as managers. They suffered from in-fighting, epitomized in a public divorce between two of the founders. The company went public in 1993, and maintained profitable growth through 1995, as a dominant supplier of TCP stacks for x86-based machines. When Microsoft started including a TCP stack at no extra cost in Windows 95 (as has become standard with all operating systems), FTP lost a significant revenue source. Because management (by that time mostly non-founders) had not made adequate preparations to transition to supplying network-using applications, FTP was not able meet Wall Street's expectations and the stock price declined sharply.

In 1998, FTP was bought out by former rival NetManage. The deal was controversial, with some shareholders claiming it was not in their interest since the sale price was less than the amount of money in FTP's bank account. [1]