QuickVerse for Windows (1.0)

July 1992

This is one of my favorite designs. We offered this in both a t-shirt (below) and a sweatshirt. QuickVerse for Windows was Parsons Technology's first product for Windows, though development started significantly later than MoneyCounts for Windows.

QuickVerse for Windows had an interesting launch. In the early 90's it wasn't clear that Windows was going to be a successful platform. We made the decision to do QuickVerse for Windows but carefully guarded our plans in order to get a jump on the competition. When the subject came up in casual conversations with our friends at Biblesoft (our main competitor) we would point out all the problems: Windows was slower, required more hardware, and didn't really offer anything you couldn't already do with DOS. We didn't say we weren't going to do Windows products, but we didn't say we were, either.

Early in 1992 we began hearing rumors of a new Bible software company called Logos that was planning to introduce Windows-based Bible software sometime in the middle of the year. We planned to ship in July but heard that Logos would be launching their product at an upcoming Christian Computing convention in April 1992.

We were heavily promoting the convention and expected hundreds of QuickVerse customers to be there. The problem: How to keep our customers from jumping ship when they saw what would be the first Bible software for Windows. The answer: We invited all our customers to attend a "major new product announcement" at the show, where we'd be giving away some free software. We collected everyone's name and address at the start of the presentation under the guise of entering them in a drawing at the end of the presentation for free software.

In the presentation we showed a barely functional QuickVerse for Windows. It had enough functionality to make it clear it was a real product, but it was far from finished. How did we keep them from leaving the presentation and buying the Logos product? At the end of the presentation I announced that everyone was a winner, and that everyone who signed up would be getting a free copy of QuickVerse for Windows when it shipped in the summer.

I hear that Logos didn't sell much software at that show. They became tenacious competitors and never let another show go by where they didn't aggressively market their product. I don't think they took us for granted after that.