Pegasystems had made money every quarter for eleven years before it went public. That was rare for a software company in 1996. The Cambridge, Massachusetts firm sold rules-based software to some of the world's largest banks, mutual funds and credit card companies. When a customer called about a disputed charge or an account change, Pega's software decided what should happen next and who should do it.

A Chess Player's Logic

Alan Trefler founded Pegasystems in 1983 and incorporated it in Massachusetts that April. He was a nationally ranked chess player, and the company built its products around rules: logic that captured how a business should handle each case. The bet was that big service firms would buy software to standardize the millions of small decisions their staff made every day. Pega had been profitable in every quarter since early 1985.

Forty Years and Counting

Pegasystems priced its IPO at $12 a share in July 1996 and listed on Nasdaq as PEGA. The company stayed independent through every cycle since, and Trefler led it for decades. Its product grew into a platform for building business apps with little code, and later added AI. In 2022 a Virginia jury ordered Pega to pay rival Appian about $2 billion in a trade-secrets case, and an appeals court threw out the verdict in 2024. Pega still trades on Nasdaq.

Cover: Captive Pegasus, Odilon Redon. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for Pegasus, the winged horse.