Windows, every mention
116 scenes across 21 shows · ← back to Windows
tap a year for its mentions
Acquired 65
the a16z Podcast 19
Another Podcast 10
TBPN 7
20VC 5
the MAD Podcast 4
Top Founders 3
How I Built This 313 more shows
every year every show Acquired 65 the a16z Podcast 19 Another Podcast 10 TBPN 7 20VC 5 the MAD Podcast 4 
Lenny's Podcast 3 Top Founders 3 How I Built This 3 
the Y Combinator Startup Podcast 2 
Founder's Journal 2 
American Optimist 2 
Latent Space 2 
Big Technology 2 
In Depth 1 
BG2 Pod 1 
No Priors 1 
the Official SaaStr Podcast 1 
the Startup Ideas Podcast 1 
A Product Market Fit Show 1 
Sourcery 1
Verbatim, from the transcripts: passages where Windows comes up on Acquired, the a16z Podcast, Another Podcast, TBPN, 20VC
Microsoft Takes on Frontier AI with Project Solara, OpenClaw, and More at Build 2026 | Diet TBPN
- ▶ 1:24 unnamed speaker Of Windows ML and Windows AI. 2 times in the scene
AI Agents Need Computers: 74% MoM Growth, 850K/Day Runs, & New Agent Cloud — Ivan Burazin, Daytona
- ▶ 7:00 Ivan Burazin The laptop that you have in front of you or the computer that's over there, or, you know, my wife is an architect, so she has like a Windows with a graphics card inside to do a three D rendering, like computers or different compositions of…
Skill Issue: Andrej Karpathy on Code Agents, AutoResearch, and the Loopy Era of AI
- ▶ 49:50 Andrej Karpathy So for example, in operating systems, you have like closed, so like, you know, windows and macOS, these are large software projects, kind of like what LLMs are going to become and there's Linux, but Linux is very easy.
Benedict Evans: OpenAI’s Moat Problem & the Future of Software
- ▶ 3:17 Matt Turck Not Windows, but if you think of the oligopoly of AWS, Azure, and GCP, those are largely undifferentiated businesses that in, uh, because of the market size seem to be doing quite well. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 22:14 Benedict Evans But in the end, all this interesting stuff on the web wasn't just, you still use, did it on a Windows PC, but it was done with other people's tools, other people's software, other people's capabilities.
The product wisdom every CPO should ignore | Jeremy Epling (CPO, Vanta)
- ▶ 1:24 Jeremy Epling So, like, when I started off, I was on Windows, working on security and deep technical things.
Anthropic’s Felix Rieseberg on AI Coworkers, Local-First Agents, and the Future of Knowledge Work
- ▶ 1:19:04 Felix Rieseberg If you're doing this on a Windows computer with like a GPU that is not the most popular GPU, it will be much longer.
Anthropic’s Trust Nuke, OpenAI’s new releases, Google Claims AI Crown | Diet TBPN
- ▶ 2:20 John Coogan We do have Windows PC Defender.
How does OpenAI compete?
- ▶ 6:01 Benedict Evans Because you don't have the mechanic that Microsoft had, and, you know, ChatGP OpenAI showed a chat, talked about Microsoft's ecosystem, but Microsoft had proprietary APIs and proprietary operating system that had a totally dominant install… 4 times in the scene
The AI presentation
- ▶ 21:04 Benedict Evans The basis of competition turned out to be network effects, whether it's for Windows or Facebook.
Seeing The Future from AI Companions to Personal Software
- ▶ 3:44 Eugenia Kuyda And so we started thinking, we got obsessed with this metaphor that the current chatbots are really the Microsoft DOS era for AI interfaces, and that there will be some sort of a Windows Mac OS moment. 2 times in the scene
Google Part II: Alphabet (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 3:03:25 David Rosenthal Or even take Microsoft and Windows.
- ▶ 3:03:26 David Rosenthal Like, Windows is still big today.
Why ChatGPT will be the next big growth channel (and how to capitalize on it) | Brian Balfour
- ▶ 48:46 Brian Balfour iOS had Android and some failed initiatives from windows.
OpenAI’s Windsurf Crash, Grok’s Wild Week, Replace Tim Cook? — With Aaron Levie
- ▶ 40:29 Aaron Levie I, I own one, um, uh, or my, my co-founder owned one, and I owned us one of their Windows, um, smartphones, uh, made by Compaq or HP.
Weekly Recap: Grok 4 Launch, Texas Floods, Web Browser War, Top Signals, Meta Smart Glasses
- ▶ 2:09:38 Ben Thompson And the attempts to become a product company with Windows eight and all the things that went on around that time, inevitably, inevitably failed. 3 times in the scene
Satya Nadella: Microsoft's AI Bets, Hyperscaling, Quantum Computing Breakthroughs · Y Combinator
Adam Neumann: This is How You Build Iconic Companies
- ▶ 19:43 Ben Horowitz Um, you know, it's a Windows PC running, Windows, 95, whatever it was, you know, it's that kind of thing.
How to Not F*ck Up Your Meetings
- ▶ 3:21 Alex Lieberman Plus as Steve Sinofsky, who's the former president of Windows at Microsoft shared in the course of building a company, the most important tool you have to create a culture of shared values is communication and meetings are critical to…
How Whop Is Making $1.2+ Billion For Creators · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- ▶ 35:39 Jack Sharky For anyone that doesn't know, it's like moving data from your Windows to your Mac computer.
The END of Ski Season? (E26)
- ▶ 2:52:31 Jordi Hays So I'd be running this like Windows machine in our house, like in the corner in like my room, just like DDoSing my dad's website.
Daniel Dines, UiPath CEO & Founder: Why Agents Do Not Mean RPA is F*** | E1240 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- ▶ 9:18 Daniel Dines Look, we had, um, we had an workflow engine, for instance, that was like Windows workflow engine, and we have perfected it over the years, but now we have switched to a more modern technology, that, that workflow engine, and we are…
Ep17. Welcome Jensen Huang | BG2 w/ Bill Gurley & Brad Gerstner · Bg2 Pod
- ▶ 7:23 Jensen Huang It is old thinking in the sense that the software was, was, uh, uh, some application running on Windows.
Acquired LIVE from Chase Center (with Daniel Ek, Emily Chang, Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg) · Acquired
- ▶ 2:17:56 Mark Zuckerberg In the PC era, Windows with the open ecosystem was the leader, and part of my goal for the next 1015 years, the next generation of platforms, is to build the next generation of open platforms and have the open platforms win.
The Mark Zuckerberg Interview · Acquired
- ▶ 1:10:09 Mark Zuckerberg In the PC era, Windows with the open ecosystem was the leader, and part of my goal for the next 1015 years, the next generation of platforms, is to build the next generation of open platforms and have the open platforms win.
Microsoft Volume II: The Complete History and Strategy of the Ballmer Years (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 36:50 David Rosenthal In the IPO press cycle, Mark Andreessen is quoted as saying that, quote, Netscape will soon reduce Windows to a poorly debugged set of device drivers.
- ▶ 37:11 Ben Gilbert If one of the things he's saying is Windows is a platform upon which independent software vendors
- ▶ 37:21 Ben Gilbert So Windows is the way that currently people write software for businesses and consumers to use.
- ▶ 37:28 Ben Gilbert And if we are going to reduce Windows to a poorly debugged set of device drivers, what I'm implying is these crappy static web pages that get served right now, that is merely a step on our journey to enabling rich web applications.
- ▶ 37:55 Ben Gilbert And so when they're saying we're going to reduce Windows, blah, blah, blah, it's saying, okay, Windows has all this stuff right now for developers, but essentially you're going to use Windows or any operating system just to boot it up,…
- ▶ 39:25 David Rosenthal You can see why it was so important to Microsoft to beat Netscape, to bring the Internet in the form of Internet Explorer into Windows and have Windows maintain its role as the dominant platform.
- ▶ 39:47 Ben Gilbert It's an application platform of the future that is distributed as a Windows app.
- ▶ 39:53 Ben Gilbert I mean, Windows had huge market share at this point, I don't know, 80, 90%, eventually over 90% market share.
- ▶ 39:59 Ben Gilbert The way that Netscape could get to consumers was because Microsoft had all these computers out there running Windows.
- ▶ 40:24 David Rosenthal You can buy it for 50 dollars as part of the plus pack that I was referencing before, and install that and add it into Windows, and Microsoft will make money on the sale of that software, but that of course does nothing to make a dent in…
- ▶ 44:41 Ben Gilbert They're still doing the same thing as ever, selling Windows licenses through OEMs and to consumers at retail.
- ▶ 1:33:38 Ben Gilbert And along with that, release XP, the most successful Windows operating system ever.
- ▶ 2:19:18 Ben Gilbert All these code names ended up referring to multiple things because it was emblematic of the organizational disarray inside the Windows development team.
- ▶ 2:19:45 Ben Gilbert Saying the next new release of Windows, which is five years since Windows XP, they really, really are counting on a new version of Windows to drive PC sales, and the one that they're getting requires pretty good GPUs.
- ▶ 2:20:53 David Rosenthal I think it was kind of a fever dream of, like, let's stuff the internet fully into Windows.
- ▶ 2:21:06 Ben Gilbert If you remember from the last episode, we talked about Chicago, Windows, and Cairo, this theoretical thing
- ▶ 2:25:50 Ben Gilbert This was kind of the Windows culture at its worst.
- ▶ 2:28:48 Ben Gilbert And if he's only spending his time on technical decisions, he needs some introduction into that feedback loop, some governor on how deep to go in re-architecting Windows for re-architecting Windows's sake.
- ▶ 2:30:17 David Rosenthal But the point is not that Apple is taking massive amounts of market share from Windows.
- ▶ 3:05:55 Ben Gilbert What Windows Mobile was, was an operating system for handset makers to adopt and put on their handsets, and, you know, these things kind of looked like Blackberries, or mostly keys with a little screen, and when you looked at it, it looked…
- ▶ 3:06:11 Ben Gilbert It had a little start menu, and it was much like the rest of the enterprise strategy, David, designed around all working seamlessly together with your Windows PC and Exchange and your corporate network.
- ▶ 3:06:58 Ben Gilbert You know, they, Dell could install some more stuff on top of Windows and customize the installation, but it was still
- ▶ 3:56:16 Ben Gilbert Now I will say, the company stayed the Windows-centric company for too long.
- ▶ 3:56:47 Ben Gilbert It was really counter strategy because we were the Windows company.
- ▶ 3:57:38 Ben Gilbert And, basically, it was, hey, we just released Windows eight, we just released the Surface, and we want the marketing message for those things to be that Office is first and best on Windows, and the only tablet in the world that can run…
- ▶ 3:58:45 Ben Gilbert At the time, I held this belief we have stayed the Windows company for far too long and need to embrace users where they are.
From Tiny Romanian Startup to Global AI Automation Leader | Daniel Dines, CEO of UIPath
- ▶ 3:51 Daniel Dines So we built pretty sophisticated, uh, it was a system programming to intercept all the Windows APIs that an application is using, and we were rendering the text, you know, in memory, and we figure out.
Microsoft Volume I: The Complete History and Strategy of founding through Windows 95 (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 2:32:15 Ben Gilbert You're starting to see truly divergent cultures at Microsoft between the systems group, which is currently making DOS and will soon make windows or soon partner with IBM or soon do something else that we're getting into here in the next…
- ▶ 2:34:14 David Rosenthal And soon to come, we'll get into Windows here in a second, one of the big, you know, this killer app for productivity in particular for business productivity.
- ▶ 2:34:23 David Rosenthal With a graphical user interface like Windows and true multitasking, you can get copy paste from like Excel into PowerPoint.
- ▶ 2:36:19 David Rosenthal Do our own graphical operating system, or at least user interface, and this is the origins of the Windows product, and they actually announced it in November of 1983 before the Mac ends up shipping, which their partner Apple is of course…
- ▶ 2:36:36 David Rosenthal Now, just like development of the Mac was rocky, development of Windows was super freaking rocky within Microsoft, too.
- ▶ 2:57:25 Ben Gilbert That's how Windows would be successful if it was a great platform for application developers to thrive on.
- ▶ 2:58:01 Ben Gilbert Developers were not really yet targeting Windows.
- ▶ 2:58:04 Ben Gilbert Microsoft sort of had to show, we make great applications for Windows, too.
- ▶ 2:58:19 David Rosenthal For OS two, some of them were targeting the Mac, like Microsoft itself, but nobody was targeting Windows.
- ▶ 2:58:28 Ben Gilbert Meanwhile, there's a huge push with OEMs to get them to install Windows.
- ▶ 2:59:13 David Rosenthal You could pay us, you know, a license fee for every machine you ship with DOS installed on it, or DOS and Windows.
- ▶ 2:59:31 David Rosenthal DOS is the standard, and we want Windows to be the standard, and Windows is gonna be the standard.
- ▶ 2:59:35 David Rosenthal We'll make it more economically attractive to you, give you a lower per unit rate, if we just kind of change the terms and say, instead of every unit you ship with DOS or with Windows, every machine you ship, period.
- ▶ 2:59:58 David Rosenthal So if you do that, you'll be paying us for every machine, whether you ship DOS or Windows on it or not, but you're gonna ship DOS and Windows anyway.
- ▶ 3:00:51 Ben Gilbert What machines they shipped DOS on or Windows on versus what machines they shipped period.
- ▶ 3:01:19 David Rosenthal The winners.
- ▶ 3:20:08 Ben Gilbert I watched the whole keynote yesterday, and at the end, they ripped down the sort of back of the tent behind the stage, and there's the entire development team in the red, yellow, green, and blue squares of the Windows logo, sort of sitting…
- ▶ 3:22:46 Ben Gilbert They market it as people on job sites using windows.
- ▶ 3:25:59 Ben Gilbert Yep.
- ▶ 3:26:19 Ben Gilbert And as Brad Silverberg put it this way to me, he said, Windows, 95 cemented Windows as the franchise product for Microsoft, which interestingly it was not yet.
- ▶ 3:28:15 Ben Gilbert It still used DOS in fallback situations for older DOS applications or drivers, but for most of the time, it was no longer true that Windows was just an operating environment on top of the DOS operating system.
- ▶ 3:28:30 Ben Gilbert Windows had now become a true thirty-two-bit operating system of its own.
- ▶ 3:28:34 Ben Gilbert Windows did all the heavy lifting.
- ▶ 3:28:45 Ben Gilbert So this was kind of the beginning of Windows as its own OS, and you can see that actually change in the marketing messages that change from operating environment to operating system.
- ▶ 3:40:44 David Rosenthal I mean, they were going to get things wrong with OS too, but they hedged the bets with Windows.
Predicting AI’s Next Advances — With Suhail Doshi
- ▶ 58:32 Alex Kantrowitz They sat by and tried to ride windows for as long as they could.
Ep 78: Emil Michael — the Master Dealmaker Behind Uber's Global Dominance · Joe Lonsdale
- ▶ 9:58 Emil Michael He dumped his drink on it, because his, you know, Windows OS was his biggest thing.
Ep 61: High School Dropout to Billion-Dollar Startup; the Story of Guillermo Rauch & Vercel · Joe Lonsdale
- ▶ 9:13 Guillermo Rauch I remember, I always tell this story, I was trying to compile a C program on Windows, and just setting up the tools and accessing information was impossible.
Yann LeCun: Meta’s New AI Model LLaMA; Why Elon is Wrong about AI; Open-source AI Models | E1014 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- ▶ 24:10 Yann LeCun So on Sun Microsystems, it was Solaris and, you know, whatever web server and Java, and then on the, on the Microsoft side, it was Windows with IIT or whatever, you know, and ASP, which was their kind of, ah, server and client-side…
How to Not F*ck Up Your Meetings
- ▶ 1:51 Alex Lieberman Plus, as Steve Sinofsky, who's the former president of Windows at Microsoft shared, in the course of building a company, the most important tool you have to create a culture of shared values is communication, and meetings are critical to…
Generative search
- ▶ 4:02 Benedict Evans Um, what happens when you move to the cloud, it's not just that you take your Win-Thirty-Two app and put it in a web browser. 2 times in the scene
An inside look at how Figma builds product | Yuhki Yamashita (CPO of Figma)
- ▶ 5:48 Yuhki Yamashita And so I spent a couple years at Microsoft, through that also moved on from Hotmail to Windows, and at the time they were working on Windows eight, and Windows eight was really interesting because it was like a very, like, touch-forward 2 times in the scene
Holiday Special 2022 · Acquired
- ▶ 1:14:30 Ben Gilbert Which, by the way, I think that's why I'm so drawn to the NVIDIA story, is because that is what they, sort of like, these bet the company big innovations, or like Apple with the Mac and the iPod and the iPhone, or Microsoft with Windows…
Jason Lemkin: Cold Email Tips; Why Only 15% of Founders Listen to their VCs | 20VC #954 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- ▶ 31:42 Jason Lemkin DocuSign was a windows printer driver.
HIBT Lab! MKBHD: Marques Brownlee
- ▶ 8:21 Marques Brownlee So there were windows themes that I showed you how to install and different alternate browsers that I showed people how to customize and get working the way they wanted.
Figma, unbundling and $20bn of antitrust
- ▶ 6:45 Benedict Evans Like you don't have to buy the new version of Office, um, but it's still a binary piece of software that you have to install on your Mac or PC.
Successful Scaling Across Markets, From a Founder Turned VC | OMERS Ventures MP Harry Briggs
- ▶ 19:53 Harry Briggs Um, and it must be Mac to PC conversion.
The Metaverse & How It Will Change the World with Matthew Ball
- ▶ 1:03:56 Matthew Ball There was no way to look at Microsoft in the late 19 nineties and believe that we would be in a future where none of us use Windows on our phone, and that our PCs would be a minority share of it, that Internet Explorer wouldn't exist
Capital-Efficient Growth (with Zoom CEO Eric Yuan & Veeva CEO Peter Gassner) · Acquired
How to Find Product Market Fit | Allan Wille, Founder of Klipfolio · PMF Show
- ▶ 6:52 Allan Wille And we amassed very quickly through probably, you know, our beta to version one to not even version two, we had 300,000 downloads of our little Windows application.
Talking about crypto
- ▶ 20:23 Benedict Evans As you create all of this capability and all this infrastructure and plumbing, at a certain point that kind of gets abstracted away and standardized and so on into Windows and Mac and so on.
What we know about web 3 so far
- ▶ 16:39 Benedict Evans Um, so there's a sort of, you know, it's the same problem with, um, you know, Steven Sonowski, who used to run Windows, said, you know, all text editors grow until they have tables and charts.
Standard Oil Part I · Acquired
- ▶ 1:26:41 Ben Gilbert Do you remember this in the early Windows days?
- ▶ 1:26:44 Ben Gilbert The deal that Microsoft cut with, I think it was IBM, was, yeah, uh, you know, you, you guys can, um, uh, can use Windows, and, uh, that's great, and if you ship.
- ▶ 1:27:01 Ben Gilbert That aren't running windows.
- ▶ 1:27:07 Ben Gilbert And so Microsoft basically ended up with, you know, the monopoly, the entire industry, because IBM's like, well, wait a minute, whether we're putting windows on these machines, we're not, we're paying for it.
page 1 of 2 · 100 scenes per page · newest episode first next →