Steve Ballmer
36 statements across 3 episodes · 12 bullish · 9 bearish · 3 people on the record · first statement Apr 22, 2024 by Ben Gilbert · said 183 times in 12 episodes since 2021 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Steve Ballmer's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by David Rosenthal (94), Ben Gilbert (88), Michael Lewis (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2025 18 mentions in 6 episodes 3 per episode
- 10 Years of Acquired (with Michael Lewis) · Acquired
- Google Part II: Alphabet (Audio) · Acquired
- Google Part I: Origins of Search. How the Best Business in Human History Happened (Audio) · Acquired
- The Jamie Dimon Interview: How JP Morgan Became an $800 Billion Bank · Acquired
- Indian Premier League Cricket (Audio) · Acquired
- TSMC · Acquired
- every mention in 2025, scene by scene →
2024 162 mentions in 3 episodes 54 per episode
2023 1 mention in 1 episode
2022 1 mention in 1 episode
2021 1 mention in 1 episode
Everything said about Steve Ballmer, oldest first
Apr 22, 2024 positive
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Apr 22, 2024
Bill Gates personally absorbed 3.5% equity dilution to hire Steve Ballmer
“In fact, it created some tension with Paul Allen, where Bill asked Paul if they could go to five percent. Paul said sure, and then Bill actually offered him eight and a half percent, and Paul got upset, and Bill said, I'll eat the three and a half percent. It …”
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Rosenthal: Microsoft's flat stock under Ballmer stemmed from failing to tell its narrative
“And I think what I realized a few minutes ago as we were talking is, this was the biggest failure of the company during this period. They did not tell their story, right? And so much of what we think of as the losses from this timeframe, and certainly everythi…”
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Rosenthal: Ballmer declared Microsoft 'all in' on cloud at UW in 2010
“In 2010, Ray Ozzie actually leaves the company, but as he's doing, he and Steve roll Red Dog, by this point in time renamed Azure, back into the server and tools business, and the two of them go to the University of Washington, and Steve gives a speech at the …”
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
DOJ Remedy Mandated Gates and Ballmer Work at Separate Breakup Entities
“Steve Ballmer had to work at one company, and Bill Gates had to work at the other. They could not work at the same company. Each of those two, after they picked their companies, had to divest all of their shares From the one that was not their employer, so the…”
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Rosenthal: Ballmer replaced Muglia despite Server & Tools making $12B and growing fast
“Bob was crushing it as Head of server and tools. Revenue was growing, I don't know, 30, 40% a year. It's a twelve billion dollar business. But the reason that Steve made the change was he said, we need a new leader who's going to come in and change this organi…”
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Jul 22, 2024 negative
Rosenthal: Steve Ballmer called Vista the worst moment of his CEO tenure
“In that conversation that we had with Steve, where he, you know, made the comment about my acquisitions, my mistakes, we just lost money on the bad ones, the genesis of that conversation was about Vista. You know, he was reflecting, he said, that probably was …”
Jul 22, 2024 bullish
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Gilbert: Popular belief that Nadella originated Azure is historically inaccurate
“As the general public is concerned, Steve Ballmer was obsessed with Windows. He built the enterprise business. He left. Satya Nadella came in and launched Azure, and Azure has been great. Like, not exactly. That's not really what happened.”
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Jul 22, 2024 positive
Jul 22, 2024
Jul 22, 2024 neutral
Jun 2, 2025 positive
Ballmer: Satya Nadella volunteered to report to Qi Lu to recruit him
“God, there's a lot, and I don't know who throws the idea out at first. Maybe Satya. We should hire Chi, and I should work for him. So Harry, and Harry was all in. Harry worked for Satya, who worked for Chi. No. We flipped it around.”
Jun 2, 2025 positive
Ballmer: Intuit Dome bans visiting gear in its 4,000-seat fan section
“There's no suites on the side. We even built a student section right in the middle, i.e. It's standing room only. You must stand. That's what you have to agree to if you're going to sit there or be there. You have to agree to stand. You have to agree to cheer.…”
Jun 2, 2025 bullish
Ballmer: LA Clippers are far more secure than Microsoft stock
“No, that I do not own for financial purposes. And I will also tell you, unlike Microsoft, it cannot go to zero. Not a chance. It is far more secure than Microsoft. Why? They're not making more of them. And as long as anybody in the world's getting richer, the …”
Jun 2, 2025 positive
Ballmer: Clippers Will Use Microsoft-Style Long-Term Grinding to Challenge Lakers
“Our goal is to be long-term grinders on that. And we want to beat them every time on the court. It's okay to have two popular teams. Los Angeles County, for gosh sakes, has the same number of people as the state of Ohio, pretty much. So there's plenty of peopl…”
Jun 2, 2025
Jun 2, 2025
Jun 2, 2025 negative
Jun 2, 2025 negative
Jun 2, 2025 negative
Jun 2, 2025 neutral
Ballmer: Microsoft explored acquiring HTC years before buying Nokia
“I'd been trying to buy a hard, I had talked about buying a phone company for years, a number of years before the Nokia deal. I forget what year it was. I flew to Taiwan and we were looking at buying HTC. They were the biggest Windows phone OEM at the time. Nok…”
Jun 2, 2025 negative
Ballmer: One of my major regrets is Microsoft losing its consumer muscle
“One of my regrets is we lost the consumer muscle along the way, because I think the ability to be ultra ultra, I mean, we're a great company, Microsoft's great company, but to have both of those muscles totally firing, if I'd been able to sustain that consumer…”
Jun 2, 2025 negative
Jun 2, 2025 negative
Ballmer: Microsoft's upgrade model threatened to cut company revenue in half
“We were selling upgrades and new licenses. And upgrades were, I can't, less than half the price of new licenses. So what does that mean? The company was headed to a world where its revenue was half of its existing revenue.”
Jun 2, 2025 positive
Jun 2, 2025 negative
Ballmer: Microsoft's mindset of doing all software was an unfocused mistake
“We've got to do all the software that these things will ever need. I mean, it was still of the mindset that said, and that there's an arrogance to that, and there's a hunger to that. That says there's just nothing we shouldn't do. And I don't think that was a …”
Jun 2, 2025 neutral
Ballmer: Nokia partnership failed without acquisition due to marketing funding economics
“The problem with the partnership with Nokia is they didn't have the money to invest in marketing. We did. We did. They didn't have the market to go. They did not have the ability to go deep pockets. We did. But if we didn't have the monetization capability bac…”
Jun 2, 2025 negative
Jun 2, 2025
Jun 2, 2025 neutral
Jun 2, 2025 neutral