MITS
company on 2 shows · 10 statements across 2 episodes · said 35 times in 2 episodes since 2024
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Acquired 34
Founders 1
2024 35 mentions in 2 episodes 18 per episode
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10 statements about MITS, every show
MITS Forecast 800 Altair Sales Annually but Sold Thousands in Months
“He had forecast that they might find 800 customers a year willing to shell out the money for their own computer. Instead, in the first few months, they sold thousands again.”
Senra: Microsoft's Initial MITS Contract Granted Exclusive BASIC Sublicensing Rights
“The deal that they signed with MITS gave them the exclusive rights to sub-licensed R software to any other company that wanted to use the AD-AD basic in their products would have to get the source code, which he describes as the recipe to basic, through MITS a…”
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 …”
MITS negotiated Intel's 8080 chip price down from $360 to $75
“The list price from Intel for the 8080 chip was 360 dollars... He managed to negotiate a volume deal with Intel to get eighty-eighty chips at 75 bucks a pop.”
MITS received 4,000 Altair pre-orders and $1.5 million upfront
“After the Popular Electronics article comes out, they get 4000 pre-orders in the first month or two, which is one and a half million dollars in Revenue. Cash paid up front.”
Microsoft's MITS deal paid $30 per copy plus 50% sublicense revenue
“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 These sub-licensing deals that MITS may or may not do with other companies who want to use the BASIC.”
Microsoft's lifetime BASIC revenue from MITS was capped at $180,000
“And the kicker on this contract is that the total Amount of lifetime revenue that Microsoft can make from the Basic. From MITS is capped at a 180,000 dollars.”
Microsoft's MITS contract required best efforts to commercialize BASIC
“And that clause is that MITS must use its best efforts to license, promote, 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.”
MITS sold thousands of Altairs but only hundreds of BASIC copies
“Despite MITS selling thousands of computers a month, only a few hundred copies of BASIC are selling per month.”