Writely, years in the making, months in execution
A nice back story on Writely (what is now known as Google Docs) via HN. I particularly like this snippet
[The creators] have been in the application software business for nearly 20 years… they understand the user problem so deeply that they can blend the advantages of each new platform with ‘document authoring problem’ to really build a platform-native solution, not a clone of someone else’s work.