It took 45 years, but spreadsheet legend Mitch Kapor finally got his MIT degree
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'He was just yanking my chain a little bit,' Kapor, 74, recalled in a separate interview.
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But the joke got Kapor thinking about why he left MIT without a degree, a story that starts even before he enrolled in Sloan's accelerated masters program in the summer of 1979.
After graduating from Yale in 1971 and bouncing around for almost a decade as 'a lost and wandering soul,' working as a disc jockey, a Transcendental Meditation teacher, and a mental health counselor, Kapor said he became entranced by the possibilities of the new Apple II personal computer.
He started writing programs to solve statistics problems and analyze data, which caught the attention of Boston-area software entrepreneurs Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston, who co-created VisiCalc, one of the first spreadsheet programs. They introduced Kapor to their California-based software publisher, Personal Software.
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Midway through Kapor's 12-month masters program, the publisher offered him the then-princely sum of about $20,000 if he'd adapt his stats programs to work with VisiCalc. To finish the project, he took a leave from MIT, but then decided to leave for good to take a full-time job at Personal.
Comparing his decision to those by other famed tech founder drop-outs,
'It was just so irresistible,' he said. 'It felt like I could not let another moment go by without taking advantage of this opportunity or the window would close.'
Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development, at MIT in 1979, where he was studying for a masters degree that he did not complete until 2025.
Photo courtesy of Mitch Kapor
A few years later, Kapor returned to Cambridge and founded Lotus in Kendall Square, leading to his first encounter with Aulet.
Around 1982, Aulet was working at IBM in the then-new personal computer unit when Kapor visited the tech giant's Madison Avenue office in New York to demonstrate Lotus 1-2-3. Kapor arrived dressed not in the IBM standard of a suit and tie but in
a Hawaiian shirt, Aulet recalled. 'This guy was so cool, so relatable,' Aulet said, which eventually inspired him to become a startup founder himself.
Over the decades, the pair kept in touch. Aulet left IBM in 1993, founded several companies, and started teaching at MIT in 2005. Kapor left Lotus in 1986,
As a venture capitalist, Kapor developed a philosophy with his wife, Freada Kapor Klein, that they called 'gap-closing investing,'
which aimed to fight racial and income inequality by supporting business concepts that would address the needs of underserved communities. HealthSherpa, for example, helped people sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, and LendStreet helped people climb out of debt.
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When Aulet made his joke on the phone call with his old friend in 2024, Kapor had largely retired from investing and realized that he wanted to complete his degree. 'I don't know what prompted me, but it started a conversation' with MIT about the logistics of finally graduating, Kapor said.
By the time Kapor gave the lecture in March, Aulet had discovered Kapor was only a few courses short. MIT does not give honorary degrees, but school officials allow students to make up for missing classes with an independent study and a written thesis.
Kapor decided to write a paper on the the roots and development of his investing strategy. 'It's timely, it's highly relevant, and I have things to say,' he explained.
One
The thesis explained that though Kapor's investing strategy was not aimed at picking entrepreneurs from underrepresented groups, he ended up backing many such founders.
'It turns out that, more often than not, the kinds of people who are the entrepreneurs with these ideas, who have the ability to do them, are themselves from a marginalized or underrepresented group, because that's the world they know and they grew up in, and that's what lit their fires,' he said.
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Such an outlook could be increasingly important at a time when politicians, from the president on down, have
'We take an alternative approach that avoids the kind of head-on opposition in the current political environment,' he said. 'This is not tech's shining hour — far from it — but there's still reason to be hopeful.'
Aaron Pressman can be reached at
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Android Authority
19 minutes ago
- Android Authority
I tried two new TECNO phones for the first time, and I was pleasantly surprised
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The Spark 40 Pro Plus is a simple, smooth, cheap starting point Ryan Haines / Android Authority The tricky part about hopping into a pair of new TECNO launches is that I didn't know what to expect. They showed up, I unboxed them, and I reached for what looked like the more familiar phone first. That turned out to be the TECNO Spark 40 Pro Plus — a 4G-only budget model with shades of everything from the Galaxy S25 to the Motorola Edge (2022) baked into its slim plastic shell and a software experience that reminds me of OxygenOS from just a few years back. At a glance, none of those borrowed ideas might sound all that exciting, but hear me out — those phones all cost significantly more than the $150-180 Spark 40 Pro Plus (price depends on region). So, for TECNO to find ways to bring everything to a budget segment is exciting. 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Unfortunately, due to limited band support, I couldn't pop my personal Verizon SIM into the Pova 7 Ultra to make it a go-to option for Pokémon Go, but I had no problems racing through games while I was at home on Wi-Fi. It conducted its way through Railbound without a problem, let me take control of Warhammer 40,000 Tacticus as smoothly as I'm used to, and kept me from getting wrecked in PUBG Mobile. I'm still not good at the game, but at least it ran pretty well. Ryan Haines / Android Authority However, what caught me about the Pova 7 Ultra was its design. I know what they say about imitation and flattery, and I'm not even mad about it this time. There's no way to avoid the fact that the Pova 7 Ultra looks like a distant Nothing cousin, from its pseudo-transparent back panel to the Status Light that wraps around its triangular camera bump. Like the Spark 40 Pro Plus, that camera bump plays a trick on the eye by housing two cameras (a 108MP primary sensor and an 8MP ultrawide backup) while looking like it has room for a third. Although I'm a little disappointed that I couldn't give the Pova 7 Ultra its full run due to band support, I'm still impressed by what it packs under the hood. It pairs the Dimensity 8350 Ultimate with 256GB of storage and either 8GB or 12GB of RAM, though TECNO likes to claim it has 16GB or 24GB by converting a dash of its storage to serve as extended RAM. Ryan Haines / Android Authority And then, there's the battery. In true gaming phone fashion, TECNO packed its Pova 7 Ultra with a hefty 6,000mAh cell backed by 70W wired Ultra Charge and the same 30W wireless charging as the Spark 40 Pro Plus. I've had a tough time draining the cell through most of my in-home gaming sessions, but I've done my best to get it there so I could use the included 3,000mAh magnetic power bank. Before you get your Qi2 hopes up, though, know that you need a magnetic case to use the power bank, but thankfully, one comes in the box. Honestly, I didn't realize that TECNO was such a chameleon After about a week with the TECNO Pova 7 Ultra and the Spark 40 Pro Plus, I still have to say I'm impressed. No, I won't say that either phone is about to replace the Pixel that has a permanent place in my pocket, but I can see how they punch above their price tags. More impressively, they do it in different ways. Although they both run a very slightly Pixel-like HiOS 15 based on Android 15, the overall software experience is entirely different. It's a pretty standard affair on the Spark, pairing a somewhat iOS-like quick settings menu with a very colorful app drawer full of a mix of Google apps and in-house versions like Game Space, Hi Translate, and the Hola Browser. I'll still probably skew towards Google Translate and Chrome since I've been using them for years, but the Hola Browser interface is cuter than expected. On the Pova 7 Ultra, the same HiOS experience is completely different. Taking another page out of Nothing's book, the team at TECNO rebuilt a few hundred custom icons in a white, black, and orange color scheme and adopted a customized new font that reminds me of a certain other Android skin. It still has essentially the same slate of in-house TECNO apps for you to explore, they just have a bit more of a gaming edge. Both of these phones run HiOS, but the day-to-day experience is different as can be. Of course, we still have to talk about the budget-minded elephant in the room. Although I've had a lot of fun exploring TECNO for the last little while, and I appreciate that it still includes goodies like cases, wireless power banks, and even chargers in the box (with UK pins), it's still tough to hop on board in the US. 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Yahoo
an hour ago
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Here's What to Expect From Deere's Next Earnings Report
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Business Upturn
2 hours ago
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EPACK Durable partners with South Korea's Bumjin to enter smart audio segment
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