Michael McCafferty

Michael McCafferty (born September 7, 1942) is an American serial entrepreneur, inventor, and programmer.

He is known as the "Father of CRM" for having invented and coded TeleMagic, the first #CRM software product for PCs.

Michael McCafferty was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on September 7, 1942, to Verna M. McCafferty and Charles F. McCafferty.

He is the second oldest of six siblings.

He has two children and currently resides in Del Mar, California.

In his early life, McCafferty worked on repairing bicycles with his brother, and in high school, he worked at a gas station.

He was accepted into Mount St. Mary's College in September 1960.

He went into multiple career paths during college, including selling advertising space to local retailers on desk blotters, birthday cake sales and delivery, and a restaurant called "The Purple Onion."

McCafferty was employed by IBM as a salesperson shortly after he graduated from college.

He became a top producer at IBM, and he sold computers in multiple states, including Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland.

He used his career at IBM to learn more about computers and running a business.

After three years, he left IBM and began working on his own business ventures.

McCafferty got a job as a solo programmer at Technitrol, Inc. in Philadelphia programming on an IBM 1130 computer.

The company's president hired him due to his lack of experience with programming, McCafferty's background with IBM, and his understanding of the programming language FORTRAN.

After graduating from college in 1964, he was recruited to work for IBM as a new account territory sales rep in Hagerstown, MD. He then became founder/CEO of Technitrol, Inc.'s startup subsidiary named Eastern Data Processing, until 1974.

After a year employed as a programmer and manager of the Data Processing department, he and the President of Technitrol decided to form a company in 1968 called Eastern Data Processing (EDP) as a subsidiary of Technitrol when McCafferty was only 26.

The goal of this company was to provide computerized payroll services to businesses.

It was intended to compete with a similar business called "Automatic Data Processing".

McCafferty was the company's President, and he had a 20% share in the company.

In the first six months of the company's operation, the company saw $400,000 in losses, which was due in part to the fact that much of its business was not related to its intended business structure.

As such, the company did not have a product to sell.

Nevertheless, the Technitrol President allowed him to continue working with the company, though with a new vision for it.

McCafferty then spent the next six years building a profitable business.

Despite these problems that the business faced early on, the combined success of it and other subsidiaries of Technitrol contributed to the parent company's success.

The company experienced a 125% increase in sales between 1972 and 1973, an increase from $4.7 million to $10.6 million.

Profits increased from $107,000 to $466,000.

When his employer, E. Stuart Eichert, died, McCafferty learned that his promised shares in the company were not set in writing, and thus he lost his ownership in the company.

He quit immediately.

The first prototype for EDP ran on an IBM 360 Model 30 with IBM 2311 disk storage drives and two Tape Drives, and was programmed in COBOL.

During seven years, it grew to support three-shift work days and was used for thousands of companies’ payrolls.

When he left EDP, he went to work in Chicago, Illinois to work for Robert F. White & Company as the company's Vice President of Operations.

In his new position, he was tasked with converting physical punch cards to tape/disk payroll files.

After working there for 2 years, he moved to San Diego strictly for the weather.

After his startup called PAL (Product & Area Locator), the first computerized Yellow Pages, in San Diego, failed, he filed for bankruptcy on March 17, 1983.

He went on to create TeleMagic as the founder/CEO of his company Remote Control International.

The software was met with positive reception both in terms of sales figures as well as customer reception.

Michael filed for Chapter 7 personal bankruptcy on March 17, 1983.

This success led his company and the software he created to eventually be purchased by The Sage Group in 1992.

During his college years, he worked on entrepreneurial endeavors, including a birthday cake delivery service, a restaurant, and advertising.

He currently works as a mentor to other startup founders/CEOs.