Shortly after that Thom and his brother-in-law Andy Foray went into business together, forming a software publishing company named System Enhancement Associates (SEA). They published several successful titles, including ARC (a data compression utility that is the progenitor of utilities such as ZipFolders), SEAdog (an early PC-pased email system), and the Kitten BBS system (a forerunner of modern online services). Along the way they developed many standards and technologies that were instrumental in the growth of the FidoNet BBS network, a forerunner of the current Internet. In 1992 SEA sold marketing rights to a Japanese company, after which Thom and Andy retired. This finally allowed Thom and his wife Irene to return to his beloved homeland, the Eastern Shore of Virginia.