Compaq, every mention

29 scenes, the whole family · ← back to Compaq

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every year anyone David Rosenthal 16Ben Gilbert 7Mitch Lasky 2Brendan Eich 2Steve Ballmer 1Michael Mauboussin 1

Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Compaq comes up

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Google Part II: Alphabet (Audio) · Acquired Aug 26, 2025 · 1 mention

The Steve Ballmer Interview · Acquired Jun 2, 2025 · 2 mentions

Microsoft Volume I: The Complete History and Strategy of founding through Windows 95 (Audio) · Acquired Apr 22, 2024 · 18 mentions

  • ▶ 1:57:57 David Rosenthal Ooh, well, I know the Compaq story, but I don't know the story of the BIOS specifically, enlighten us.
  • ▶ 1:58:02 Ben Gilbert It is basically why Compaq worked, is what it comes down to.
  • ▶ 1:58:05 Ben Gilbert So, Compaq was formed basically to clone the IBM PC.
  • ▶ 1:58:10 Ben Gilbert They saw the market opportunity, and they realized they could buy from all the same equipment vendors,
  • ▶ 1:58:35 Ben Gilbert So, Compaq reverse-engineered the BIOS, and the way that they did it
  • ▶ 1:58:51 Ben Gilbert So, Compaq had two engineers, and one engineer went in and fully dissected the code for the IBM PC BIOS, and basically saw all the proprietary calls that it made, and documented each of those calls without
  • ▶ 1:59:53 Ben Gilbert Compaq was the fastest startup to ever hit a hundred million in revenue, then the youngest firm to break into the Fortune 500, then the fastest company to hit a billion in revenue, and by 1994, Compaq was the largest PC maker in the world.
  • ▶ 2:00:07 David Rosenthal The Compaq story is amazing.
  • ▶ 2:00:10 David Rosenthal So the three people who start Compaq in 1982 are actually Texas Instruments engineers who left and they wanted to start a company.
  • ▶ 2:00:40 David Rosenthal They start the company in 1982, and within the first year, they do a hundred and eleven million dollars of revenue of selling IBM PC clone hardware.
  • ▶ 2:01:05 David Rosenthal Compaq went public the very next year in 1983, well before Microsoft, which is funny.
  • ▶ 2:01:10 David Rosenthal But yeah, Compaq, all these other clone companies that get started, Microsoft licenses DOS to all of them, importantly, critically, on a per machine sold basis.
  • ▶ 2:02:45 David Rosenthal And unlike Compaq that, you know, yeah, they did a hundred and eleven million of revenue their first year, they're selling hardware, which has serious cogs associated with it.
  • ▶ 2:46:04 David Rosenthal And so a big part of actually the compact story about how compact and the clones leap ahead of IBM is
  • ▶ 2:46:38 David Rosenthal But really, they're like, no, no, Compact, go do the .
  • ▶ 3:47:31 Ben Gilbert They sold some retail, but the team was just about, hey, make sure HP and… Compaq and Dell and Gateway.
  • ▶ 3:57:07 David Rosenthal But Microsoft could make Compaq successful.
  • ▶ 4:09:31 David Rosenthal The YouTube channel is all, like, unboxing, uh, Compaq PC from-

Benchmark’s Mitch Lasky and Blake Robbins on The Art of Business in Gaming · Acquired Apr 26, 2023 · 2 mentions

  • ▶ 1:48:32 Mitch Lasky I remember we were playing some of the early EA games like Starflight on a compact portable that had an RCA out that we could plug into a television, and so we were watching, you know, we were playing it, that was our monitor to play, but…
  • ▶ 1:48:45 Mitch Lasky 30 pound, you know, sewing machine.

Benchmark Part I · Acquired Sep 28, 2022 · 2 mentions

Amazon.com · Acquired Aug 16, 2022 · 1 mention

The Browser (with Brendan Eich, Chief Architect of Netscape + Mozilla and CEO of Brave) · Acquired Feb 15, 2022 · 2 mentions

  • ▶ 19:21 Brendan Eich They had the Windows Monopoly, but what they did in tying the browser to it and threatening Compaq with revocation of the Windows license if
  • ▶ 19:31 Brendan Eich Compact Shift Netscape as the default browser was illegal, and they got convicted for it.

Michael Mauboussin Master Class — Moats, Skill, Luck, Decision Making and a Whole Lot More · Acquired Oct 5, 2021 · 1 mention

  • ▶ 26:58 Michael Mauboussin So he walks into my office and he goes, Hey, you know, I'm working on the PC stocks and I wonder if I'm thinking about brands, you know, like, so Dell and compact and all these, he's like, what do you know about brands?
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