Michael D. Hammond

Mr. Hammond and Ted Waitt, another Iowa native, were in their early 20s when they started Gateway in 1985, initially working out of Mr. Waitt’s family farm just outside Sioux City. The two met the year before at a University of Iowa football game, according to The Sioux City Journal. The company, originally called Gateway 2000, sold computer parts before developing a line of personal computers and selling them directly to consumers, its shipping cartons recognizable by their black-and-white spotted design resembling the hide of a Holstein cow. In 2007, Gateway, which by then had moved its corporate office again, to Southern California, was sold to Acer, a Taiwanese company, for $710 million. Mr. Hammond, the lesser known of the two Gateway founders, helped manage the company’s operations in Iowa and South Dakota. He was seen as the technical expert, and Mr. Waitt was considered the marketing specialist. Mr. Hammond, who did not graduate from college, worked as a diesel mechanic before going to work as a salesman for a Des Moines computer shop. After leaving Gateway he founded Dakota Muscle, a company in North Sioux City that restored and repaired classic cars. His wife, the former Lisa Hunt, whom he married in 2011, died of cancer in June. Mr. Hammond is survived by a son, Michael; a daughter, Jessica; a brother, Mark; a sister; and four grandchildren.