flâneur

Founders: #174 Bill Gates (Overdrive)

podscripts.co · 9,859 words · saved by 1 readers

What I learned from reading Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace by James Wallace. ---- There would be an industry breakthrough unimagined at the time, and it would be made by a company that didn’t yet exist. [7:55] Another corollary to Joys Law of Innovation was that the number of bright people in any company went down as the size went up. [10:47] As Apple founder Steve Jobs liked to say: When you are at simplicity, there ain’t no complexity. [12:49] Gates looks at everything as something that should be his. He acts in any way he can to make it his. It can be an idea, market share, or a contract. There is not an ounce of conscientiousness or compassion in him. The notion of fairness means nothing to him. The only thing he understands is leverage. [17:21] I became convinced that Microsoft was building the last minicomputer. That the Microsoft Network was based on the notion that your competitors were the model — proprietary online services like America Online — and that the reality was that the Internet was going to be such a fundamental paradigm shift, that you needed to think about your strategies fundamentally differently. [28:08] The single most powerful pat

[00:00:00] A few years earlier, there might have been great concern among Microsoft senior managers about the condition of Bill Gates when he showed up the next morning. After a restless night before the launch of Microsoft Excel in New York City in May 1985, Gates had shown up for the big event without sleep, without a shave, and without a shower. He looked as bad as he smelled. There was no need to worry this time. Gates had been 29 years old that day in New York City. Now he was a couple months shy of his 40th birthday. The computer geek, once ridiculed for his personal appearance, had…

related reading