A startup with Brown University roots, acquired by Apple Computer in 1989.
Clearview Software was a software startup that Steve Glenn co-founded in the late 1980s, built by a young team with roots at Brown University. Among its leadership was Danny Warshay, then a Brown undergraduate, who went on to become a serial entrepreneur and the founding executive director of Brown’s Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship.
In 1989, Apple Computer acquired Clearview. It was one of Apple’s earliest acquisitions — the company had made its first, Network Innovations, only the year before. Following the sale, Steve joined Apple, where he served as a marketing specialist.
Like many software companies of the pre-web era, Clearview left little public record behind: no archived website, no surviving product pages. What remains is the outline of the story — a young team out of Brown that built something Apple wanted, and sold it to them — and the careers it launched. For Steve, it was the first step in a path that led through Apple, Walt Disney Imagineering, idealab, PeopleLink, and eventually to LivingHomes and Plant Prefab.