Yesterday I just did Video 0059 "Microsoft Part1: 4 Billionaires and the founding of Microsoft"

This is the URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1DwodVWcu0

Almost everyone knows the founders of Microsoft are  Bill Gates and Paul Allen

Less known is these two high school buddies bluffed their way into founding of Microsoft

It began in 1975, when Paul Allen spotted an add on the new Altair 8800 PC, which he immediately understood to be the dawn of the PC age.

This is the Ad

Gates and Allen then contacted Ed Morris, owner of the company MIS than manufactured the Altair 8800

Ed Morris asked Gates and Allen if they had the software.  They answered YES.

In reality, they never had the software.  So Gates and Allen were just bluffing.

Now, Gates and Allen would work feverishly on the software they promised Ed Morris in the dormitory of Harvard University.

In 1980, as employee Number 30,  Steve Balmer was hired as the first business manager of Microsoft by Bill Gates

Now we have the third famous billionaires of Microsoft:  Steve Balmer,

The fourth Microsoft billionaires is Charles Simoyni, the Hungary immigrant who earned his PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University while working for Parc Xerox (the famous lab that created the mouse, GUI and object oriented programming etc)

This is picture of Charles Simonyi and Bill Gates in 1981

Charles Simonyi would develop the 2 Cash Cows of Microsoft :  MS Excel and MS Words

 

Overall, Microsoft has been great for its employees, besides the 4 billionaires just mentioned, Microsoft also created 12,000 millionaires out of its employees.