Stacking success at Quarterdeck: luck helped, but savvy was key to Terry Myers' steering software firm to niche glory.

Terry Myers finally has a garden and a dog, and they're well deserved.

A comfortable four-bedroom home with a pool in Pacific Palisades was finally affordable last year, when the 47-year-old software publisher moved into the multimillionaire class.

The Pennsylvania-born entrepreneur had toiled in Los Angeles' software fields for 10 years, renting an apartment on Quarterdeck Court in Marina del Rey.

Then a year ago, Quarterdeck Office Systems, the company she co-founded and named after her old address, went public. With a 10.5 percent stake, her net worth shot beyond $25 million.

That's because Wall Street believed computer users would keep gobbling up Quarterdeck's wares, which fall into a niche called "utility" software. Products made by the $48 million-in-sales company are designed to enhance the Microsoft-brand DOS system software that now resides in 50 million PCs worldwide. They allow two or more programs to run concurrently, and they free up memory capacity to run them more efficiently.

Buyers include Boeing, Coca-Cola and the CIA, which realized they could get higher performance out of their aging PCs rather than scrapping them for something with a bigger chip or better system software.

"Quarterdeck preserves people's investments," says Myers, who can be rather averse to blowing money on new toys. "People are driving 10-year-old cars," notes the woman who bought an 1986 Mercedes last year when she could have bought a Rolls.

"She isn't somebody who is motivated by money," said Citibank Chairman John S. Reed, through a spokesman. "She just likes to see things happen," said the chief of America's biggest bank, who worked with Myers years ago.

Quarterdeck's president, chief executive and chief financial officer still makes things happen just like always, with 12-hour days. Up at 5:30 a.m. Four hours writing and strategizing at home, where she rarely takes incoming calls. And then she goes to the office.

She's not destined, so far, to becoming a celebrity outside of the software world, thanks to a low-powered ego and avoidance of corporatism's trappings -- the company jets, brusque interviews, expensive office remodels and power clothes.

"There's not a lot of pressed suits around Quarterdeck," chuckles Marketing Vice President Dave Kirkey of Irvine-based microcomputer maker ALR Inc. "But there is a lot of energy there."

Indeed, her 300 employees are driving net sales at an 80-percent annual growth rate, yielding a fat 25 cent profit on each sales dollar in 1991.

Yet Myers' dog Andy saunters through the warren of rented office buildings in Santa Monica on Main Street.

Her purchases of furniture are all second-hand, from Drexel Burnham bankruptcy auctions to local lawn-chair shops.

And her workers sometimes relax to a hearty game of Dungeons & Dragons on the boardroom table until 1 a.m., or climb to the roof-top patio, plug their computers and phones into a jack, and work under the sun or stars two blocks from beach.

"That style is far from unusual in the software world," reminds Bill Higgs, vice president of software research at Santa Clara research firm Infocorp. "Successful software development is still more an art than a science."

He credits Myers and Gary W. Pope, a co-founder and Quarterdeck's software guru, for fostering an artsy-enough environment. "In some senses, Terry as the visionary and Gary as the marketing leader have made a very effective team."

"She has a very open personality, but on the other hand has a very intense business mind," says ALR's Kirkey. ALR was the first to ship IBM clones in 1986 with the then-new 386 microprocessor. ALR officials were impressed enough with Quarterdeck to offer ALR computers with Quarterdeck's DeskView and QEMM software as options and has since grown into a $227 million-in-sales company today.

"That bundling really made us," says Myers. "We got all their customers."

Since 1987, net sales have climbed from $2.3 million to $48 million, while profits have soared from $346,000 to $12 million.

If Myers' style, vision and luck have clicked, it wasn't always so. She doubted the whole enterprise's prospects back in 1985, when competitors nearly strangled Quarterdeck: IBM introduced its rival TopView software. Then, Microsoft Corp. came out with Windows, the legendarily popular windowing software that created window-like boxes on the screen through which separate programs appeared -- Quarterdeck's mainstay technology. Quarterdeck was "devastated," in the words of Myers, who laid off all but 11 of its 35 employees while her venture capitalists negotiated to sell the corporate carcass to arch-rival Bill Gates, Microsoft founder and chairman.

Gates, perhaps the shrewdest and richest software baron in history, flew out to Quarterdeck's Christmas party at Pope's house. Maybe Gates realized what sad shape they were in, figures Myers, because the next day the multibillionaire lowered his bid. The deal fell through and Quarterdeck revived.

"My whole life has been lucky," says Myers, summing up a string of events stretching forwards and backwards from that Christmas party.

IBM's TopView fizzled and Windows didn't do everything that Quarterdeck's DESQ did. Also, a good fairy (Myers' mother in fact) came through with $25,000 to put them back on their feet.

Indeed, lady luck appeared long ago for Myers.

While she was a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, a man named John Reed hired her for a summer internship at Citibank. On her first day, Reed's boss was promoted to president and tapped Reed to be his chief-of-staff. Myers could not know that the talented banker with the title then of "assistant cashier" would remain fond of her, and rehire her later, as he climbed up the company ranks to become chairman and CEO of the mammoth New York banking company by 1984.

She returned to Carnegie Mellon to complete a master's in industrial administration. Fortunately, Arthur Young in New York was hiring non-accountants and she was selected with only 29 other junior hires to get an all-expense paid accounting course at Northwestern.

The New York Times decided to profile the program and selected only Myers and one other trainee. A copy of the article fortuitously came into Reed's hands. He hired her back and encouraged her for the next 11 years working in various Citicorp subsidiaries that were pioneering office technology.

Myers recalls, "We were allowed to do anything we wanted" at Citicorp's Axxa unit in Brentwood, Calif., led by the brilliant Jack Scantlin, pioneer there of automated-teller machines and earlier of one of the first radio pagers. Axxa also developed Telex encrypters for Asian accounts and crude computer "workstations" that they stuffed into roll-top desks manufactured in downtown Los Angeles, Myers recalls. But federal law didn't allow banks into hardware-making. The enterprise was divested.

So Myers left. She founded her own firm with three other Citicorp talents, programmers Jill Eastman and Mike Kuppin, and Pope. Like anyone back then who was hip at all about software (Steve Jobs included), the foursome was enamored with the revolutionary work at Xerox's Palo Alto think tank concerning icons, electronic mail and windows.

That was 1981. They rented a one-room studio behind a Santa Monica beach house, across the street from Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda's flat, and began working for 18 months with no salary, trying to develop fast reflexes.

They spent $14,000 for two Vector Graphics personal computers, which they dumped soon afterward when IBM debuted its PC -- the Myers gang rightly betting it and its Microsoft-brand system software would eventually become industry standards. They tied their fortunes to Microsoft's MS-DOS (disk-operating system) software, vowing to enhance it in myriad ways.

"Putting a layer on top of DOS turned out to be the strategic idea of the '80s for software," insists Myers.

Quarterdeck's flagship DESQview and QEMM software have been particularly sought after by "power users" and corporations, who try to wring the most out of their microprocessors and programs, said Infocorp's Higgs.

Higgs and some other software experts say Myers thrives only by staying a year and a half or more ahead of Bill Gates and IBM. Witness her rolling out a multiple windows function prior to Gates' (single-window) Windows in 1985.

"It's amazing that we're still here," Myers says when reminded of Gates' legendary marketing moves and cutthroat strategies.

SNAPSHOT

Therese E. Myers

Native of: Pennsylvania

Age: 47

Current residence: Pacific Palisades

Education: Carnegie Mellon University, M.S. degree in industrial administration; B.A. degree, Newton College of the Sacred Heart (now Boston University)