Bill Gates and Paul Allen Build an Empire
Microsoft. After nearly a decade of Acquired episodes, we are finally ready to tackle the most valuable company ever created. The company that put a computer on every desk and in every home. The company that invented the software business model. The company that so thoroughly and completely dominated every conceivable competitor that the United States government intervened and kneecapped it… yet it’s STILL the most valuable company in the world today.
This episode tells the story of Microsoft in its heyday, the PC Era. We cover its rise from a teenage dream to the most powerful business and technology force in history — the 20-year period from 1975 to 1995 that took Bill and Paul from the Lakeside high school computer room to launching Windows 95 alongside Jay Leno and the Rolling Stones. From BASIC to DOS, Windows, Office, Intel, IBM, Xerox PARC, Apple, Steve Jobs, Steve Ballmer… it’s all here, and it’s all amazing. Tune in and enjoy… Microsoft.
More on the episode
corrections
- The first GUI actually pre-dates Xerox PARC! Doug Englebart's “Mother of All Demos” was at Stanford Research Institute in 1968, demoing the first mouse, graphical user interface, and more. Many of these team members did however go onto form the core group of researchers at Xerox PARC.
- We said that Steve Ballmer became the development manager for Windows 1.0 after the former dev manager was fired. That is not the case — that person resigned unexpectedly.
- We left out the story of the development of “Protect Mode” Windows, which was a secret skunkworks project driven by a brilliant engineer named David Weise and his boss, Phil Barrett. (And not authorized by management!) By accessing the Intel 386 processor’s “protect mode”, David was able to allow Windows apps to use the chip’s full 16MB of memory, instead of just the standard 1MB memory they otherwise would have had. This was absolutely essential to making Windows commercially and technically viable in the marketplace (and eventually led to it dominating OS/2, Mac, etc). (Thanks to Rob Glaser)
- Windows 386 was a key bridge product that paved the way for Windows 3.0 and 3.1. Win386 leveraged one key feature of the 386 chip that wasn’t in the 286 – the ability to multitask multiple 8086 virtual machines, which allowed multiple DOS apps to stay active at the same time. This was a super valuable feature for several transitional years. (Thanks to Rob Glaser)
- The competing OS from UCSD was actually called “UCSD p-System”, not Pascal. Pascal was and is a programming language that UCSD contributed heavily to. (Thanks to Brad Feld)
- The DEC operating system originally written by Dave Cutler (and other DEC colleagues) was actually named VMS, not VAX. The whole machine/system was commonly called VAX. (Thanks also to Brad Feld)
- The decision to have Excel be made for the Mac instead of the PC was a huge and very disruptive decision made by Bill personally. Excel (code named Odyssey at the time) was originally being developed for the PC. When Bill changed it, the team didn’t like it, and the head of the Odyssey team (Doug Klunder) decided to quit over that decision (but was persuaded to stay until Excel 1.0 shipped). (Thanks to Rob Glaser)
- Bill Gates wasn’t the only key Microsoft person who donated to the University of Washington CSE department — Paul Allen also gave a huge amount, and the department today is actually named the “Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering”. The Ballmer family as also given large sums to the UW over the years.