How Many People Worked at Microsoft After Four Years?

David Senra says four years in, Microsoft had just 11 employees. He thinks the count might be 12. The photo from the move from Albuquerque to Seattle shows 11 people, and he is pretty sure one person missed the session. Bill Gates was 24. Senra says that leanness was one of the most surprising things he had read about the company.

A year and a half after the move to Seattle, Microsoft had $7 million in annual sales and fewer than 40 employees. It was about to go into business with IBM, a company whose revenues approached $30 billion a year.

What sustained Microsoft was not Gates writing programs. Senra says Gates kept the company going through tireless salesmanship. For several years he alone made the cold calls. He haggled, cajoled, browbeat, and harangued the hardware makers until they bought Microsoft's services and products.