Lotus, every mention

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every year anyone Ben Gilbert 21David Rosenthal 10Brendan Eich 3Steve Ballmer 2

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

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Formula 1: Fast cars, celebrities, and B2B software (Audio) · Acquired Mar 5, 2026 · 4 mentions

  • ▶ 1:08:22 Ben Gilbert So in 1968, Colin Chapman from Lotus had become a really big believer that the way that his drivers could go faster in the turns was applying more downforce, so they'd have better traction on the road, and they put the first airfoils or…
  • ▶ 1:10:39 Ben Gilbert Lotus is still working on this issue.
  • ▶ 1:11:43 Ben Gilbert That is what the Lotus team did.
  • ▶ 1:12:46 Ben Gilbert Mario Andretti, upon driving it, said that it cornered as if it was painted to the road, and he won both the Drivers' Championship and Lotus won the Constructors' Championship in 1978.

Google Part II: Alphabet (Audio) · Acquired Aug 26, 2025 · 2 mentions

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

Microsoft Volume II: The Complete History and Strategy of the Ballmer Years (Audio) · Acquired Jul 22, 2024 · 9 mentions

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

  • ▶ 2:20:35 David Rosenthal This is the one, two, three spreadsheet and it goes on to become at that point in time, the most successful software ever.
  • ▶ 2:21:07 Ben Gilbert So Lotus one, two, three had some graphics, but it was still in character mode.
  • ▶ 2:21:20 Ben Gilbert So Lotus one, two, three was faster, it had bigger spreadsheets, and it was just more powerful.
  • ▶ 2:22:13 Ben Gilbert That's the interesting thing about when they're evaluating Multiplan and they say, how do we not get Lotus one, two, threed again?
  • ▶ 2:22:59 David Rosenthal General Electric isn't gonna write a better spreadsheet than one, two, three.
  • ▶ 2:23:12 Ben Gilbert If one, two, three is the best spreadsheet out there for the current technology generation, you just can't compete with them.
  • ▶ 2:23:24 David Rosenthal And that's what Lotus one, two, three did with the spreadsheet on the IBM PC and IBM compatible PC.
  • ▶ 2:27:12 unnamed speaker And one of the first ways that they see to bring the graphical user interface to their products is launching Excel for the Mac, because they basically see the way that we got destroyed with Lotus one, two, three,
  • ▶ 2:27:52 unnamed speaker That's what VisiCalc was, that's what even one, two, three was.
  • ▶ 2:32:10 Ben Gilbert The whole marketing message is Excel on a Mac is better than Lotus one, two, three on a PC.
  • ▶ 2:35:38 David Rosenthal You know, Lotus would really go down a dead-end evolutionary path with notes, you know, later in its life, in its final chapter, where the application was going to be the operating system.
  • ▶ 2:35:50 Ben Gilbert Lotus Notes was crazy.
  • ▶ 3:50:52 Ben Gilbert So a lot of the keyboard shortcuts in Excel to this day are there because they were originally the Lotus one, two, three shortcuts, and they wanted people to have the same muscle memory that just worked.
  • ▶ 3:51:58 David Rosenthal Like, Microsoft wasn't gonna beat Lotus one, two, three until the graphical paradigm came along, and then Excel being graphical was just obviously so much better.
  • ▶ 3:52:11 David Rosenthal Multiplan was fine, but one, two, three was the winner.
  • ▶ 3:52:34 Ben Gilbert I mean, the Lotus one, two, three multiplan thing
  • ▶ 3:52:37 Ben Gilbert In that era, Microsoft just didn't have great distribution yet, and so Lotus one, two, three just got pretty far ahead of them, and Microsoft had no way to catch up.
  • ▶ 3:57:09 David Rosenthal Microsoft could make Lotus successful.

The Browser (with Brendan Eich, Chief Architect of Netscape + Mozilla and CEO of Brave) · Acquired Feb 15, 2022 · 3 mentions

  • ▶ 22:36 Brendan Eich I think Netscape made a mistake in 96 when they bought a company to go after Lotus Notes, because it didn't work.
  • ▶ 23:06 Brendan Eich It did not take down Lotus Notes.
  • ▶ 25:24 Brendan Eich And through an enormous stroke of luck, Mitch Kapoor, who founded Lotus one, two, three, and has his own experience with Microsoft's tricks, was friends with Ted Leonsis, one of the AOL executives.
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