Peter N Lewis grew up programming computers and started writing Macintosh software while working for Curtin University in the early 1990s after finishing a Computer Science and Mathematics degree at the University of Western Australia. Seeing the amazing power of the Internet and the (at the time) scarcity of Mac Internet tools, Peter made it his goal to bring world-class Internet and Unix tools to the Mac, combining the traditional Mac ease-of-use with the power of the Internet and Unix.
Pioneering electronic distribution and try-before-you-buy software models, Peter encouraged Kee Nethery to form Kagi (the ecommerce company, not the search engine) to handle the mounting purchases and Peter became Kagi’s first customer in 1994. Peter’s programs became synonymous with quality and power and sales continued to grow so that Peter was able to found Stairways Software Pty Ltd in April 1995 and begin full time development. The company soon grew to employ several other people and became the first Kagi vendor to exceed US$1M revenue.
In 2004, Stairways acquired Keyboard Maestro from Michael Kamprath. We used and loved Keyboard Maestro and found to be an indispensable productivity tool, and have continued to enhance it for over fifteen years, building the userbase along the way with steady word-of-mouth growth that has seen the number of users using Keyboard Maestro double every three years.
Peter N Lewis continues to lead the company while staying connected to the users by handling most of our technical support, which, thanks to our focus on reliability and ease-of-use, is a relatively light burden despite the power of our products.