It was Al Shugart who began his career at IBM in San Jose, California and rose to become the company’s direct access storage product manager, responsible for its disk storage products. Direct access and disk storage were IBM’s most profitable businesses at that time.
Shugart went on to found the self-named Shugart Associates in 1973, with the goal of developing and building the small disk drive used in early PCs and Macs but was pressed into resignation as CEO in late 1974, owing to the refusal of his venture capitalist investors desire to go in the direction Shugart thought necessary.
Five years later, having waited out his non-compete contract terms, Shugart and Finis Conner started the shortly named Shugart Technology in 1979, soon changing its name to Seagate Technology. Seagate soon became the world’s largest independent manufacturer of disk drives and related components.