UnicornHRO has roots that stretch all the way back to the infancy of modern software. The firm, which began in 1982 as Software Plus, was founded with venture funding, but failed to achieve more than modest growth until 1996, when Frank Diassi, the lead venture investor, took control and changed the company’s name to UnicornHRO. Diassi had originally invested in the firm based on a strong belief that human resources and payroll should be handled externally. (Thousands of American and international companies agree, as the business model of ADP, Paychex and other firms demonstrate.) To indicate how expensive a misstep it can be to mishandle payroll withholding taxes, consider this: the IRS charges a penalty of 10% per day of the payroll amount on late or misfiled returns. UnicornHRO is now self-funded, debt free and growing at a double-digit rate. Once it evolved into UnicornHRO, the company began to move its business model away from its desktop orientation. First, it developed a line of client/server versions of UnicornHRO designed to allow the company to compete with ADP and similar firms. As the ASP movement dawned in the late 1990s, UnicornHRO saw an opportunity in the on-demand model. While competing with the...