GoKawiilWhen it comes to 80s computer brands, few flew as high as Eagle Computer flew in 1983. The aptly named company was selling 12,000 computers a month and had been doubling sales every quarter under the leadership of a talented CEO. Then Eagle lost its CEO, Dennis Barnhart, in a crashed Ferrari on the day of its IPO, June 8, 1983. In this blog post, we’ll explore the reasons Eagle Computer fell, because there was more to it than just the tragic story involving its CEO.
History of Eagle Computer
Eagle had been a leading producer of CP/M computers, entering the market somewhat accidentally. They were an offshoot of Audio Visual Labs, who made a product that could double as a general purpose computer. Audio Visual Labs recruited Dennis Barnhart, the vice president of marketing and sales at Commodore, in 1981. Audio Visual Labs spun Eagle off as a separate company soon after, and Barnhart became CEO.
Its first IBM compatible computer became a market leader and led to a $37 million IPO based on that computer’s sales and the expected sales of its followups. But on July 30, 1986, just a little over three years later, Eagle Computer went out of business.
There’s more to how it got there than the common story involving the Ferrari.
Eagle Computer enters the PC clone business
When IBM released its IBM PC 5150 in 1981, Eagle decided to pivot from CP/M to MS-DOS. Its first PC, the Eagle 1600, did not attempt 100% compatibility. Like many early PCs, it tried to do at least one thing a little bit better than IBM.
The Eagle 1600 received mixed reviews, due in part to its inconsistent compatibility.
Eagle was one of the first companies to understand the market really wanted 100% compatibility, rather than every company trying to one-up IBM in different ways that weren’t compatible with IBM or each other, like the DEC Rainbow and Tandy 2000.
Eagle PC 2
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