It became a huge success, far outshining VisiCalc. Lotus 1-2-3 improved on VisiCalc by including charting and basic database functions in addition to VisiCalc’s calculation capabilities. The next major spreadsheet success after VisiCalc was Lotus 1-2-3, created by a team headed by Mitch Kapor in 1983.
Bob Frankston partnered with Bricklin to create the version that eventually hit the markets and became a major success. It was basic software, capable of producing a spreadsheet of only 5 columns by 20 rows. The first major leap occurred in 1978 when VisiCalc was created by Dan Bricklin, a student at Harvard Business School. The electronic spreadsheet has been in existence since 1978, but it was 1982 that Microsoft became involved.