Who was the lead developer of EXCEL?

Doug Klunder was one of the programmers who gave life to the Excel spreadsheet. The electronic spreadsheet was essentially invented in 1979 by software pioneer Dan Bricklin, who started up Software Arts with Bob Frankston and created VisiCalc. The technology took a huge next step in 1983 when Mitch Kapor's Lotus Development Corp. rolled out Lotus 1-2-3, which integrated charts and spreadsheets in the same program. Soon IBM PCs, loaded with Microsoft's MS-DOS and Lotus 1-2-3, were pushing aside mainframe terminals in corporate offices.

Microsoft already had its own spreadsheet, Multiplan, but lagged in sales behind 1-2-3. And so Klunder and a small team sequestered themselves in the Red Lion Hotel in Bellevue, Washington, for three days of meetings to plan out what Excel would look like. The group included Klunder's friend Jabe Blumenthal, who was to become the program manager, along with Charles Simoyni—a Microsoft executive who would eventually become a billionaire and two-time space tourist—and Gates himself. They had a big paper tablet on an easel for notes, but spent most of the time arguing back and forth about how best to respond to 1-2-3, Klunder recalls.