Smash Notes

Back to #401 How Bill Gates Works, with David Senra.

What Did Bill Gates Start When Software Was Free?

David Senra reads Bill Gates on starting a pure software company when software was supposed to be free. It was copied from a friend, openly shared, or even stolen, and it had always been free. Over many late-night talks, he and Paul decided that as personal computers got cheaper and spread into businesses and homes, demand for high-quality software would be nearly unlimited.

Senra says he reread that paragraph about 15 times. In five other books on Bill Gates he had never heard the plan put this way. They wanted a software factory: a broad range of products regarded as the best in the business, many products from the start, a big team of skilled programmers if things went well, and their software on every personal computer in the world. No pure software company existed. Customers thought the product should be free, and almost nobody owned a personal computer.

They had one customer, and faith they could build from there. The customer was a tiny company in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in a strip mall by a check-cashing place and a massage parlor. Senra calls that the humble beginning of one of the most successful companies ever created.

Grokipedia·Bill Gates·David Senra

Transcript

#401 How Bill Gates Works ·

Founders

More from this episode

  1. Why Did Larry Ellison Call Bill Gates More Dangerous Than Edison?David Senra reads Larry Ellison calling Bill Gates more dangerous as Rockefeller than he would have been as Thomas Edison.
  2. Why Did Bill Gates Treat Constraints as a Friend?David Senra says young Bill Gates treated constraints as a friend.
  3. How Did Bill Gates Learn to Code From a Dumpster?David Senra reads that Bill Gates learned by pulling other people's code out of a dumpster.
  4. Why Did Bill Gates Choose Software Over Hardware?David Senra reads Bill Gates choosing software over hardware because manufacturing computers seemed too risky, while writing software took only brain power…
  5. How Did a Best-efforts Clause Save Microsoft?David Senra reads Bill Gates on the best-efforts clause that later got Microsoft out of an exclusive license.
  6. 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.
  7. How Much Did 5 Percent of Microsoft Sell for?David Senra says Bill Gates sold 5 percent of Microsoft for $1 million to Technology Venture Investors, TVI.
  8. Why Did Bill Gates Remove His Car Radio?David Senra says Bill Gates took the radio out of his car so the drives between home, the office, and the airport could be spent thinking about Microsoft.
  9. Why Did Bill Gates Stare at Philippe Kahn's Photo?David Senra reads that Bill Gates was staring at a photograph of Philippe Kahn, the rival he had spent years trying to get rid of.
  10. What Did Bill Gates Want From Seattle Computer?David Senra reads Paul Allen's account of what Bill Gates wanted from Seattle Computer Products: a sale, not a license, so Microsoft owned DOS.

People

More answers like this

The other side

More with David Senra

More with Bill Gates

Related episodes

Plays from this note through the rest of the episode.

Note

Weekly highlights

One letter a week.

The notes worth hearing, with the minute they were said.