Ashton-Tate
In June 1982 Cole hired Rod Turner as the director of OEM sales for Ashton-Tate. In a few weeks Turner solved a sales commission plan issue, that had been bothering George Tate for some time, with the top performing salesperson (Barbara Weingarten, now Guerra), and Tate and Cole promoted Turner to be Vice President of world-wide sales three weeks after his initial hire. Turner was approximately the 12th employee of Ashton Tate. Since the company was truly boot-strapped, using no external venture capital, the founders did not make a practice of hiring experienced veterans, and most of the team at Ashton-Tate were young and enthusiastic, but inexperienced. Jim Taylor was responsible for product management in the early days, and worked closely with Wayne Ratliff and the other key developers on dBASE II. In 1982 Perry Lawrence and Nelson Tso were the two developers who were employed at Ashton-Tate, while Wayne Ratliff employed Jeb Long from his royalty stream.
Anthony Saxton
Anthony Nicholas Scott Saxton (23 July 1934 – 31 March 2015) was a British advertising man and later headhunter who established the "swinging mega-boutique" "Way In" on the top floor of Harrods in 1967. In 1979 he and his business partner Stephen Bamfylde set up the headhunting firm Saxton Bampfylde. He was chairman of executive search company Moloney and director of Australian miners Kingstream through which he formed close ties with the regime in North Korea.