The following article appeared in Christian Computing Magazine, December 2000.
Copyright © 2000 by Christian Computing. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Laridian: A small company that likes it that way!

by Steve Hewitt

Many of our readers recognize Craig Rairdin as synonymous with QuickVerse and Parsons Technology. I first met Craig and heard of his Bible study software before I published the first issue of CCMag in January of 1989 (and believe it or not, it was called Logos)! In 1988 Craig wrote the first version of what was to become QuickVerse in his spare time, and took it to Parsons where it quickly became one of the top-selling Bible software packages on the market.

Ten years and three mergers later, Craig left Parsons to write Bible software for handheld computers. Shortly after he left, two more acquisitions left the Church Software Division he founded in the hands of Findex.com, and the rest of the old Parsons Technology belonging to Mattel.

So what motivated him to leave a successful career with Parsons to launch a new company in a speculative niche market?

"It's all about being big and being small," Craig told us. "Parsons-Intuit-Broderbund-TLC-Mattel was big. The company was big, the development team was big, and of course the problems were big. I wanted to be small again. Not just to escape problems or simplify my life, but for all the right reasons." For Craig, "all the right reasons" means having the ability to put the customer first and creating software that meets or exceeds customer expectations despite what Wall Street, wholesale buyers, and institutional stockholders think. "Public ownership means too many bosses. Making good software takes only one boss: your users. Make them happy and they'll make you happy. It's pretty simple."

Together with Jeff Wheeler (QuickVerse project manager and long-time Parsons employee) and Jim VanDuzer (Director of Electronic Publishing for Parsons), Craig set out to create a company that would emphasize smallness and closeness to the customer. Development teams would be small (Craig and Jeff would do all the programming) and most of the functions of the company would be automated. This eliminated the need for big-money investors to fund teams of programmers and telemarketers. The company needed no facilities or equipment beyond what the three had in their homes already.

Craig began working on PalmBible (later renamed PocketBible) for Windows CE in the summer of 1998 while he was still at Parsons Technology. Windows CE is a scaled down version of Windows targeted to handheld, pen-based devices. "Parsons perceived the market for handheld computers as too small to bother with," he said. "When Windows CE first came out we were part of Intuit [makers of Quicken]. Even with their vast user base they still weren't comfortable doing software for CE or the Palm. They preferred to lend their name to the efforts of third parties rather than invest in their own development, due to the size of the market. To me the problem wasn't that the market was too small, it was that the company was too big. Big companies can't do anything without spending a few million dollars."

As Craig worked on PalmBible through the summer of 1998, the usefulness of the handheld platform for Bible study really became apparent. Being able to take three or four Bibles to church in a device the size of a pocket New Testament that provided full-text searching and the ability to take notes was proving invaluable. "Despite the opinion of those who see the Internet as portending a shift back to the 'big computer in the sky' days of mainframe computing, I always felt computing was getting more and more personal over time. Handheld devices like Palm organizers and Windows CE computers are stepping stones to even smaller and more personal devices," says Craig. "Bible software actually makes more sense on these devices than it does on your desktop PC. After all, the average Sunday School teacher's Bible reference books take up no more room than his desktop computer, and are just as tied to his desk as the computer is. As long as you're sitting at a desk, why not reach behind you and pull a printed book off the shelf? Being able to take your library with you wherever you go, however, is significantly more compelling than having to boot up Windows to look up a verse or the definition of a word."

Part of staying small meant automating as much of the company as possible. The Internet offered the perfect solution to marketing, sales, and product delivery. If they could create a Web site that would automate the order-taking, technical support, and software delivery processes, they could focus on product development and keep costs to a minimum. While Craig had maintained a personal Web site for several years, his knowledge of Web design and programming for something as sophisticated as an online order-taking and software delivery system was very limited.

There was only one logical thing to do at this point: call Bob Parsons. Bob founded Parsons Technology in 1986 and left in 1996 after selling the company to Intuit a couple years before. He then moved to Arizona and started an Internet service provider and Web design company called Jomax Technologies. Over the next couple of years, several key employees had followed Bob to Jomax. Many of these had worked on the systems and software at Parsons that allowed the company to be one of the few profitable companies on the Internet in those early years. "If anybody knew what we needed, it would be Bob and his people at Jomax," Craig said.

Jomax did know exactly what they needed, and created a simple but effective capability that let users place orders online, have their credit cards instantly processed, and download their purchased software within minutes. On the back end, the system provides sales and other reports to make bookkeeping relatively easy.

One of the unexpected benefits of being 100% Internet based has been the freedom it has given Craig and the others to be out of the office while the company operates as if they were at home monitoring every transaction. Jeff Wheeler told us, "It's not unusual to be at a trade show or programming convention where they have public Internet terminals. We can log into our site, check sales, issue refunds, and answer customer support emails between appointments. As long as customers' questions are being answered, it doesn't matter if we're answering them from our offices in Iowa, or from a convention in California." It also gives them the freedom to work from home, giving them more time for family activities.

By early 1999, Craig and Jeff had resigned from Parsons Technology to work full-time on Bible software for handheld computers. Jim left at that time also and took a youth ministry position within his church, though he's still involved with Laridian on a regular basis.

Craig and Jeff had started the company with software for Windows CE computers, even though the Palm OS has a larger installed base. Why start with Windows CE rather than Palm software? "Programming for Windows CE is so very much like programming for desktop Windows platforms, plus even those early devices provided more raw power to support the type of features that we wanted to provide," Jeff said. Nevertheless, they knew they'd need to break into the Palm market sooner or later. In October 1999 the company acquired Bible software for the Palm OS called MyBible. Having the opportunity to acquire the best Palm Bible software at the time was a real boon both to the company and to sales. Laridian immediately leveraged its existing relationships with publishers to add some additional Bibles to MyBible.

The next big step was in April 2000, when Microsoft launched the Pocket PC - a new Windows CE device designed to address the shortcomings of earlier units. Laridian was invited by Microsoft to exhibit its software (now renamed PocketBible) at the launch of the Pocket PC in New York City. PocketBible is the only Bible software for Pocket PC to take advantage of the ClearType technology in the Pocket PC. ClearType increases the apparent resolution of the screen to make reading of electronic text easier on the eyes.

What about the future? Our readers know that Craig has always been quiet about what "may or may not be under development", whether at Parsons or at Laridian. This year Laridian released The New Unger's Bible Dictionary, The New Unger's Bible Handbook, and Nave's Topical Bible for PocketBible. For those accustomed to hundreds of Bible reference books on CD-ROM this may not sound too impressive. But Craig reminds us that these devices typically have only 32MB of memory, which they split between program and storage. "It's like having a total of 32MB of RAM and hard drive space. You have to be very diligent about minimizing memory consumption. So you choose your reference material carefully and you compress the files as much as possible," Craig said.

Fitting with the characteristics of Palm and Windows CE devices, the company's goal is to publish materials that are by their nature both concise and essential, though they're open to the idea of massive reference libraries as the memory capacity of handheld devices increases. "Our software is infinitely scalable. It's storage capacity that holds us back. IBM just announced a 1 GB hard drive the size of a quarter, which should work great in a Pocket PC. We're sure other enhancements are coming. When the hardware catches up with us, we'll be ready," Craig said.

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