About Golden Software

40 years ago, Golden Software began as a small company that develops, sells, and supports scientific visualization software.

Today, we still develop, sell, and support scientific visualization software, and more.

That “more” is providing the very best customer service, customer experience, and company culture. We aim to inspire the world by showing it is possible to provide a customer experience that makes people say “WOW!” and to foster a company culture that makes teammates say, “Golden Software is a breath of fresh air!”

Our Why

Our scientific visualization software is used by scientists and engineers across the globe.

These individuals solve some incredibly complex and challenging real-world problems – they help locate and preserve valuable resources, they conduct environmental impact assessments, they save lives, and ultimately, they make the world a better place!

We are passionate about helping these individuals make their positive impact by enabling them to communicate complex information in an easy to understand visual format. Our customers are at the heart of all of our conversations, and this is the reason we have the best reputation in the industry for high quality, user-friendly software with legendary customer support.

THE GOLDEN SOFTWARE TEAM

Santiago Vivas

Grapher Product Manager

Katie Yoder

Customer Success Team Lead

YOU CAN CREATE REAL CHANGE. JOIN US AND MAKE AN IMPACT ON THE WORLD!

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HISTORY

Founded in Golden, Colorado in 1983, Golden Software is the brainchild of Dan Smith, a graduate student in the Mining Department at the Colorado School of Mines (CSM), and of Patrick Madison, a CSM computer science instructor. At that time, personal computers were new and their applications were limited. Mapping applications required mainframe computers and pen plotters.

Together, Dan and Pat developed a printer language that operated on a PC and required only a dot matrix printer. Their program, PlotCall, offered a dramatic improvement on the level of resolution available in a computer-generated map: most graphics programs of the time produced printouts that were based on “screen dumps” and limited the resolution to roughly 24 dpi. PlotCall, on the other hand, offered the full resolution of the installed printer–usually 200 dpi resolution (a breakthrough for the time).

As hardware and software technology improved, Golden Software’s products evolved and remained at the leading-edge of scientific graphics software. In 1985, Surfer was the company’s first program to take advantage of technological advances for terrain modeling, bathymetric modeling, landscape visualization, surface analysis, contour mapping, watershed and 3D surface mapping, gridding, and viewshed analysis. Grapher followed in 1986 and provided users with graphing capabilities previously limited to manual methods.

In 2014, Blakelee Mills acquired Golden Software and spent the next 9 years as CEO focusing on the improvement of operational efficiencies. Under her leadership, the team implemented frameworks and processes on which the company could grow. She focused heavily on fostering a strong company culture, and as a result, the Golden Software team navigated many internal and external challenges successfully while staying true to their core values. In 2023, Blakelee stepped down as CEO as her heart was guiding her to focus on her family. She maintains ownership of Golden Software and assumes a strategic role, providing high-level guidance and direction to ensure Golden Software remains aligned with its core values and mission.

Today, Golden Software continues to develop innovative data visualization tools which support scientists in a wide variety of fields and settings. Golden Software is led by CEO Zach Mills who began his career as product documentation writer, before taking ownership of financial and product strategy. Zach’s unique ability to understand both the scientific and technical aspects of the Golden Software products as well as the business development aspect of the software industry, led him into a leadership role with the company and the eventual position of CEO in 2023.