Lotus Founder, at New Outfit, Debuts Product

Nearly three years, $4 million and an entire business strategy later, the company formed by departed Lotus Development Corp. founder Mitchell D. Kapor has introduced its first software product.

The program, unveiled Monday by Kapor’s new firm, On Technology, is designed to help users of Macintosh personal computers better organize files and data stored in their machines. Although the product, called On Location, has already been hailed by reviewers, analysts said it is not likely to reach the superstar status of Kapor’s first program, Lotus 1-2-3, the best-selling personal computer software program ever written.

Nevertheless, the introduction of On Location is a milestone of no small proportions for Kapor, a 39-year-old Yale University graduate and former rock and roll disc jockey who founded Lotus Development in 1978 and introduced the popular Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet program just three years later.

Kapor left Lotus in 1986, citing its huge size and growing impersonal corporate culture. Within months, he had opened On Technology and announced grandiose, but vague, plans to develop an advanced and highly sophisticated personal computer software system. However, two years later, Kapor scrapped those plans and said the company would instead concentrate on smaller and specific applications programs, such as the product unveiled Tuesday.

“This is what we are,” Kapor said. “We’re going to find niches where there are real problems and we’re going to offer the best solutions we can.”

Kapor acknowledges that he, and the notoriety he generated at Lotus, are key ingredients to the success of the new strategy. “Certainly there’s a curiosity factor. Certainly people are interested in what we’re doing because of who I am.”

But Kapor said his public persona should be sufficient to draw attention to the company in the increasingly crowded pack of software developers. After that, he said, the products have to speak for themselves.

So far, early reviews of On Location, which is expected to be available next month for $130, are favorable. Richard Shaffer, editor of a personal computer newsletter in New York, pronounced the product a “hit” in his most recent issue.