Altair BASIC

product on 4 shows · 3 statements across 2 episodes · said 32 times in 5 episodes since 2017

Acquired 20 Founders 8 20VC 3 In Depth 1

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Acquired 20Founders 820VC 3In Depth 1

2025 8 mentions in 2 episodes 4 per episode
2024 21 mentions in 2 episodes 11 per episode
2017 3 mentions in 1 episode

every mention on every show, scene by scene, with the transcript →

3 statements about Altair BASIC, every show

ACQUIRED Assertion Supported
Paul Allen wrote the Altair BASIC bootloader on a plane
“Paul gets on a plane, flies from Boston to Albuquerque, and, you know, in a total, like, epic legend moment, they didn't have a bootloader written for the basic interpreter. So they had the basic, it was all written, they'd done it on the emulator, and Paul's …”
David Rosenthal Apr 22, 2024 ▶ 45:08 Microsoft Volume I: The Complete History and Strategy of founding through Windows 95 (Audio) · Acquired
ACQUIRED Assertion Supported
Paul Allen hand-coded the Altair BASIC bootloader in pure octal
“On paper, by hand, he is hand-coding octal, not even assembly language instructions, like he's hand-coding in pure octal the instructions to load their basic interpreter program into memory.”
Ben Gilbert Apr 22, 2024 ▶ 45:40 Microsoft Volume I: The Complete History and Strategy of founding through Windows 95 (Audio) · Acquired
20VC Assertion Supported
Buchheit: Microsoft's first product targeted only a few thousand potential customers
“Microsoft's first product was Altair Basic, which was a little basic interpreter for, or compiler for this computer called the Altair that had probably several hundred or maybe thousand possible customers.”
Paul Buchheit Nov 1, 2017 ▶ 6:31 20VC: Y Combinator's Paul Buchheit on Creating Gmail Version 1.0 & Leadership Lessons from Working With Zuckerberg and Larry Paige

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