MITS, every mention

Microsoft Volume I: The Complete History and Strategy of founding through Windows 95 (Audio) · Acquired Apr 22, 2024 · 34 mentions

• ▶ 47:08 David Rosenthal So, now is the time to say a few words about Ed and Mitt.
• ▶ 47:12 David Rosenthal Like, what is this company?
• ▶ 47:24 David Rosenthal MITS is about as far away from IBM as you can possibly imagine.
• ▶ 47:30 David Rosenthal MITS basically was a model rocket company.
• ▶ 47:45 David Rosenthal And the reason that they're introducing the Altair and they made this big splash in the magazine was this is a last ditch gambit to try and save the company.
• ▶ 50:15 David Rosenthal Either way, he gets the sweetheart deal, and not only does it make computer history and enable and create Microsoft, it saves the company of MITS, so they were on the edge of bankruptcy.
• ▶ 51:25 David Rosenthal Paul decides to move out to Albuquerque to be close to the action here, and he actually joins Myths as their vice president of software.
• ▶ 52:11 David Rosenthal Bill and Paul kind of need to set up a company, but Paul is an employee of MITS at this point.
• ▶ 54:30 David Rosenthal So, once the partnership is set up, they sign an exclusive licensing arrangement with MITS.
• ▶ 54:45 David Rosenthal So MITS gets exclusive license to the BASIC interpreter, to the BASIC, as they call it, for the AD-AD.
• ▶ 54:55 David Rosenthal And MITS is the one that can then decide whether to sub-license the BASIC out to other companies or not.
• ▶ 55:06 David Rosenthal Distribution deal with MITS where MITS becomes the exclusive seller and distributor of Microsoft's BASIC.
• ▶ 55:23 David Rosenthal And the terms of the deal are Microsoft is to get 30 dollars for each copy of BASIC that MITS sells, plus 50% of the revenue that comes from
• ▶ 55:33 David Rosenthal These sub-licensing deals that MITS may or may not do with other companies who want to use the BASIC.
• ▶ 55:49 David Rosenthal This is a big, big, big diverging of interest between Microsoft and MITS.
• ▶ 56:04 David Rosenthal Uh, from MITS is capped at a 180,000 dollars.
• ▶ 56:08 David Rosenthal So, Ed and MITS really have the upper hand in this deal.
• ▶ 56:34 David Rosenthal So, definitely a great deal for MITS.
• ▶ 56:45 David Rosenthal MITS is the industry.
• ▶ 56:56 David Rosenthal And that clause is that MITS must use its best efforts to license, promote,
• ▶ 57:04 David Rosenthal And commercialize the basic broadly in the marketplace, and that any failure to do so by MITS would be grounds for termination of the contract by Microsoft.
• ▶ 57:51 David Rosenthal Resigns from MITS to join Microsoft full-time.
• ▶ 58:15 David Rosenthal One is sort of like MITS is the one at the controls of sales, not Microsoft.
• ▶ 58:19 David Rosenthal But two, MITS is selling a thousand computers a month.
• ▶ 58:26 David Rosenthal Despite MITS selling thousands of computers a month, only a few hundred copies of BASIC are selling per month.
• ▶ 1:04:10 David Rosenthal So during 75 and 76, MITS pretty much had this new microcomputer market all to themselves.
• ▶ 1:04:24 David Rosenthal Like, the Altair and MITS was the microcomputer company.
• ▶ 1:06:04 David Rosenthal But Ed and MITS, they keep dragging their feet on negotiating these.
• ▶ 1:06:11 David Rosenthal Everything's got to go through MITS.
• ▶ 1:06:30 David Rosenthal Is MITS using its best efforts to commercialize the basic and gain adoption in the market?
• ▶ 1:06:48 David Rosenthal So in May of 1977, MITS gets acquired by the tape drive manufacturer Pertek for six and a half million dollars, and Ed kind of rides off into the sunset, and Pertek, they know about this dispute with Microsoft, and they sort of come in and…
• ▶ 1:08:23 David Rosenthal So, that fall in 1977, the dispute between MITS slash Pertech and Microsoft goes to arbitration in Albuquerque, and the interim months while this arbitration is happening are the only moment in Microsoft's history where, like, cash gets…
• ▶ 1:08:47 David Rosenthal People aren't paying MITS for
• ▶ 1:13:52 David Rosenthal So yeah, even though it takes until the very end of 1977 when the MITS dispute