It worked. The brainy unintelligible technical wizard and char- ismatic front man. And the device, whatever it was, it seemed to work.
The investors installed their own marketing person to get sales going and Pierre was asked to be President. At first he said he didn't want to. He didn't know how to run a company. That doesn't matter, the investors said. You are a salable item. A person whom the press and future investors can relate to. We want you to be the image of the company. Elegance, suave, upper class. All that European crap packaged for the media. Steve Jobs all over again.
Pierre relented, as long as he could continue his music.
Max's engine was renamed dGraph by the marketing folks and the company was popularly known as DGI. Using Byte, Personal Comput- ing, Popular Computing and the myriad computer magazines of the early 1980's, dGraph was made famous and used by all serious computer users.
DGraph could interface with the data from other programs, dBase II, 123, Wordstar and then relate it in ways never fathomed. Automatically. Users could assign their own language of, at that time, several hundred words, to describe the third dimension of data. Or, they could do it in pictures. While the data on the screen was being manipulated, the computer, unbeknownst to the operator, was constantly forming and updating relationships between the data. Ready to be called upon at any time.
As the ads said, "dGraph for dData."
As success reigned, the demand upon Pierre's time increased so that he had little time for his music. By 1986 he lived a virtu- al fantasy. He was on the road, speaking, meeting with writers, having press conferences every time a new use for dGraph was announced. He was adored by the media. He swam in the glory of the attention by the women who found his fame and image an irresistible adjunct to his now almost legendary French accent and captivating eyes.
Pierre and Max were the hottest young entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley; the darlings of the VC community. And the company spar- kled too. It was being run by professionals and Max headed up the engineering group. As new computers appeared on the market, like the IBM AT, additional power could be effectively put into the Engine and Voila! a new version of dGraph would hit the market to the resounding ring of an Instant Hit on Softsel's Top 40.
Max, too, liked his position. He was making a great deal of money, ran his own show with the casualness of his former hippie days, yet could get on the road with Pierre any time he needed a break. Pierre got into the act hook, line and sinker and Max acted the role of genius behind 'The Man'. That gave Max the freedom to avoid the microscope of the press yet take a twirl in the fast lane whenever he felt the urge.
The third round of funding for DGI came from an unexpected place. Normally when a company is as successful as DGI, the original investors go along for the ride. That's how the VC's who worked with Lotus, Compaq, Apple and other were getting filthy stinking rich. The first two rounds went as they had planned, the third didn't.