Microsoft, every mention
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every year anyone David Senra 278
Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Microsoft comes up
How Obsession Built Christopher Nolan
- ▶ 17:33 David Senra There's a great, uh, there's a great anecdote and a great story from the early days of Bill Gates' career when he was building Microsoft. 2 times in the scene
The Simple Genius of Jony Ive
- ▶ 44:18 David Senra Still, the seeds of the iPod successes were shown with the first device and Johnny was confident in the new product.
The Relentless Missionary Creating AGI: Demis Hassabis
- ▶ 26:35 David Senra If you invent a breakthrough in artificial intelligence so machines can learn, that would be worth 10 Microsofts.
- ▶ 49:52 David Senra OpenAI and Microsoft have literally parked the tanks on the lawn.
How Rick Rubin Works
- ▶ 1:02:35 David Senra That's exactly what convinced Paul Allen and Bill Gates to stop focusing on school and going all in on Microsoft.
How Rockefeller Worked
- ▶ 51:20 David Senra This reminds me of Microsoft does very similar things, a 120 years later.
How Larry Ellison Thinks
- ▶ 12:37 David Senra Later on, we'll go into a lot of detail of this fight, this intentional fight that he picks against Bill Gates and Microsoft and how beneficial the positioning was.
- ▶ 39:09 David Senra He's saying, no, no, Oracle may not be as well known as IBM or Microsoft, but that's our class. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 50:41 David Senra And so he's talking about two companies that Microsoft killed, and I don't know if I've said this to you already, but he's just excessively likable. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 51:47 David Senra I like to quote Steve jobs when he said that the thing that really bothers him about Microsoft is not how successful they are or how much money they have. 5 times in the scene
- ▶ 55:58 David Senra He said everybody at the time was so scared of Microsoft. 2 times in the scene
How Bill Gates Works
- ▶ 1:38 David Senra It covers his early childhood and his life up until founding Microsoft and a few short years after that. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 4:24 David Senra And one of the ways this manifested was Bill was obsessed with cost control, and he is constantly hounding everyone in the company about it. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 6:34 David Senra That will never leave him or are very present as he's building Microsoft is the fact that he is ruthlessly competitive and full of energy.
- ▶ 10:03 David Senra Bill Gates and the making of a Microsoft empire. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 14:17 David Senra You obviously wouldn't start Microsoft today. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 28:41 David Senra Microsoft was going to be a software factory. 5 times in the scene
- ▶ 29:55 David Senra He talks about himself out of everybody, out of his co-founders, out of all the people working at Microsoft. 4 times in the scene
- ▶ 34:43 David Senra And at the time it looked like one of the worst things can happen to Microsoft. 6 times in the scene
- ▶ 37:29 David Senra Driven by the sense of responsibility I felt for Microsoft, I had closed the hatch door and locked the wheel. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 39:06 David Senra The second one is going to be focused on building Microsoft. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 40:39 David Senra And so the first highlight from hard drive that I'm gonna talk to you about is the fact that by 1990, remember they're having these starting Microsoft late seventies, 76, 77. 6 times in the scene
- ▶ 45:19 David Senra The way that it would describe the early employees at Microsoft, they called them microkids. 14 times in the scene
- ▶ 50:25 David Senra And I think it was interesting because now we've fast forwarded in Microsoft's history and we see that this focus and intensity is still there. 5 times in the scene
- ▶ 51:27 David Senra Lotus lost ground because it was very late in catching the two biggest technology waves, the Macintosh and Windows.
- ▶ 55:31 David Senra Microsoft was a high stress environment because Bill drove others as hard as he drove himself. 5 times in the scene
- ▶ 58:41 David Senra So then Paul goes into Bill's thinking on their most important deal in the early days, Microsoft, which obviously there's a deal with IBM that's been covered over and over again. 8 times in the scene
- ▶ 1:04:04 David Senra And Microsoft's price is less than half of X dollars. 5 times in the scene
Steve Jobs In His Own Words (Make Something Wonderful)
- ▶ 5:30 David Senra He said, listen, Microsoft, you have to admire what they built. 4 times in the scene
- ▶ 1:18:56 David Senra I don't quite know how to express it, but it has to do with the fact that Apple is the only alternative to Windows, and that Apple can still inject some new thinking into the equation.
- ▶ 1:25:12 David Senra A new board of directors that got some phenomenally experienced people on it, and we did a deal with Microsoft, the largest software company in the world, wanting to help Apple was a fact that didn't escape very many people, and it added a…
- ▶ 1:55:03 David Senra If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would never have had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them either.
Rare Steve Jobs’s Rare Interview
- ▶ 29:31 David Senra In fact, that was one of his, um, his criticisms of Bill Gates, you know, the fact that he thought Microsoft made unbelievably ugly and, and, you know, just not well-designed products.
Lessons from Jeff Bezos's Shareholder Letters
- ▶ 1:10:43 David Senra We don't do PowerPoints.
The Life Story of Michael Dell
- ▶ 18:26 David Senra They chose DOS for Microsoft and Intel, uh, they were such a huge and powerful company, such an American institution.
Dinner With Michael Ovitz
- ▶ 21:09 David Senra Think about the money that Microsoft makes today compared to what they made in 1919 90.
400 Pages of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger In Their Own Words
- ▶ 28:28 David Senra I think it was with probably like with Google might've been with Microsoft, but they subpoenaed all of like the, the employee records.
The Life Story of Jerry Jones: Owner of The Dallas Cowboys
- ▶ 55:22 David Senra I told you this before, but one of my favorite all-time biographies I've ever read is like the early days of Microsoft. 4 times in the scene
Elon Musk and The Early Days of SpaceX
- ▶ 23:39 David Senra The early days of Microsoft, it was the same way. 2 times in the scene
Mr Beast's Leaked Memo
- ▶ 16:27 David Senra Think about the early days of Microsoft.
- ▶ 40:09 David Senra And in that book, it said Steve didn't give his team much formal feedback during the U S versus Microsoft antitrust case. 2 times in the scene
Nick Sleep's Letters: The Full Collection of the Nomad Investment Partnership Letters
- ▶ 37:41 David Senra In previous nomad letters, we have argued that the biggest error an investor can make is the sale of Walmart or Microsoft in the early stages of the company's growth.
Li Lu and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett
- ▶ 1:01:55 David Senra And he gives the example of Microsoft with truly great companies. 2 times in the scene
Rare Bernard Arnault Interview
- ▶ 25:21 David Senra And so he talks about Microsoft or Intel, or even going way deep into business history with this company called National Cash Register.
The Inside Story of America's Richest Man: Sam Walton
- ▶ 49:59 David Senra The way I think about Sam's affable country boy personality with what's really inside, when I read a biography on a young Bill Gates, excellent book if you haven't read it yet, it's called Hard Drive, The Making of the Microsoft Empire,…
How Steve Jobs Kept Things Simple
- ▶ 25:25 David Senra And it compares the operating system upgrades of Apple and Windows.
- ▶ 25:37 David Senra Microsoft was offering Windows Vista at this time,
The Biography of Walt Disney
- ▶ 35:31 David Senra Think about the decades people made fun of him because Microsoft had all this market share.
Texas Oil Billionaire Monty Moncrief
- ▶ 15:15 David Senra When a surfer gets up and catches the wave and just stays there, he can go for a long, long time, but if he gets off the wave, he becomes mired in the shallows, but people get long runs when they're right on the edge of the wave, whether…
- ▶ 58:19 David Senra It's the first, like, 35 years of his life because it ends at the Microsoft IPO, and I was rereading the highlights because he, young Bill Gates had, there's this line that says, like, this monomaniacal quality, and essentially what I'm…
Napoleon's Maxims and Strategy
- ▶ 19:02 David Senra It can't be like Apple, Microsoft, just like,
Charlie Munger (the NEW Poor Charlie's Almanack)
- ▶ 54:16 David Senra And so he uses the example of Microsoft or Intel, and then this company that he loves, he talks about over and over again, national cash register, which 3 times in the scene
The Autobiography of Ted Turner
- ▶ 55:55 David Senra Uh, he tries, he almost does a deal where he sells to Bill Gates and Microsoft.
The Biography of Anna Wintour
- ▶ 50:56 David Senra They are expected to have like a blank word document up because as soon as she walks in the door,
- ▶ 57:00 David Senra When Microsoft was on the rise, she came back to the office and talked about how attractive she thought he was, and the person she's saying to this, her last name is Jones, and she goes, Jones just thought, God, she's attracted to people…
Working with Jeff Bezos
- ▶ 15:04 David Senra So this is when they kick out PowerPoint and they switch to these narratives. 7 times in the scene
- ▶ 16:50 David Senra From now on, your presentation software is Microsoft Word, not PowerPoint.
- ▶ 25:06 David Senra Half-baked thinking was harder to disguise on the written page than in PowerPoint slides.
- ▶ 34:50 David Senra Jobs got to the real purpose of the meeting and announced that Apple had just finished building their first Windows application. 4 times in the scene
Ed Catmull (Founder of Pixar)
- ▶ 28:54 David Senra So they get an offer from, Microsoft's just one of these companies. 3 times in the scene
Steve Jobs (Make Something Wonderful)
- ▶ 5:30 David Senra Steve hated where there was, like, no spirit, no taste, no humanity in the products, and so he was talking about, in 1986, he said, listen, Microsoft, you have to admire what they built, you know, they're, they're extremely aggressive,… 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 1:16:03 David Senra I don't quite know how to express it, but it has to do with the fact that Apple is the only alternative to windows and that Apple can still inject some new thinking into the equation.
- ▶ 1:22:17 David Senra We did many things, but the three things that stood out in people's minds were we brought a new management to run the company, a new board of directors that got some phenomenally experienced people on it, and we did a deal with Microsoft,…
- ▶ 1:53:23 David Senra If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would never have had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them either.
I had dinner with Charlie Munger
- ▶ 1:12:08 David Senra And I think if you listen to episode two 90, or if you read the book that the episode is about hard drive, Bill Gates in the making of the Microsoft empire, you'd realize that he had complete focus on it. 2 times in the scene
The Making of McDonald's: The Biography of Ray Kroc
- ▶ 4:33 David Senra The early days on episode two 90, the early days of Microsoft and Bill Gates, the fact that he would refuse to sell his software for a fixed price and instead get paid for every copy in perpetuity.
The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig
- ▶ 24:04 David Senra Let Microsoft create the operating system for the IBM PC. 3 times in the scene
The Biography of Bill Gates
- ▶ 0:20 David Senra Microsoft, the company that he and Paul Allen had founded 16 years earlier, had become the first software company in history to sell more than a billion dollars worth of products in a single year. 7 times in the scene
- ▶ 4:30 David Senra Intense is exactly what a young Bill Gates obsession with the computer was, and the second reason was he's about to meet Paul Allen, which is going to be a few years from now, his co-founder of Microsoft. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 13:40 David Senra That he had in high school, that he had in college, that he's gonna have his entire time running Microsoft.
- ▶ 14:19 David Senra And so there's a ton of stories in the book in the early days of Microsoft that people would just walk in the office in the morning, and they trip over, like, Gage just sleeping on the floor, or sleeping on his desk, or curl up in the…
- ▶ 18:28 David Senra And so this is going to be the first project of what turns into Microsoft.
- ▶ 20:57 David Senra And this is another main theme that is repeated over and over and over again in the book is just how financially conservative Bill Gates was when he was running Microsoft. 8 times in the scene
- ▶ 22:48 David Senra And so the agreement that Microsoft has with MITS at the time 9 times in the scene
- ▶ 22:51 David Senra Is that, hey, you're going to pay us a license fee for every computer that you sell that contains our basic, and there's going to be a dispute on how exclusive this license agreement should be. 4 times in the scene
- ▶ 25:32 David Senra And so again, I just have to reiterate how lean Bill Gates ran Microsoft four years in. 13 times in the scene
- ▶ 27:55 David Senra And so this is what's going to set the stage for IBM and Microsoft to work together. 7 times in the scene
- ▶ 31:44 David Senra And so the book goes into a lot more detail about the development of the partnership between Microsoft and IBM. 10 times in the scene
- ▶ 34:04 David Senra And so we go back to this main theme that appears over and over again in the book, over and over again in documentaries about the early days of Microsoft. 4 times in the scene
- ▶ 37:09 David Senra So at the time Microsoft's doing this massive expansion into 8 times in the scene
- ▶ 37:16 David Senra And so they're actually developing what is eventually going to turn into Microsoft Word. 4 times in the scene
- ▶ 41:03 David Senra Microsoft, on the other hand, was a bunch of individualists, with the whole show run minute to minute by Bill Gates. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 42:54 David Senra Microsoft has to go public. 14 times in the scene
Warren Buffett & Charlie Munger In Their Own Words
- ▶ 18:04 David Senra And so he uses example like Microsoft or Intel.
Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick's Bitter Partnership
- ▶ 21:54 David Senra But Bill Gates, at the very beginning of Microsoft, it was him, his secretary, and I think 28, I think the first 30, uh, employees of Microsoft, if I'm remembering correctly, was Bill Gates, his secretary, and 28 programmers, and it said… 2 times in the scene
Jeff Bezos' Shareholder Letters
- ▶ 1:03:49 David Senra They will not do PowerPoint. 2 times in the scene
Working With Steve Jobs
- ▶ 18:11 David Senra They were still, if you bought an Apple device, it would have Microsoft Internet Explorer on it as part of the deal that, uh, that Steve worked out with Bill Gates when he got that invention, uh, investment from Microsoft.
What I Learned Before I Sold to Warren Buffett
- ▶ 5:05 David Senra Of course, to quickly grow into the next Microsoft.
Paul Graham's Essays Part II
- ▶ 3:53 David Senra He's referencing Microsoft and Airbnb there.
Paul Graham's Essays
- ▶ 24:34 David Senra oh, you mean when Microsoft and Apple were founded? 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 59:02 David Senra Where would Microsoft be if IBM insisted on an exclusive license for DOS?
- ▶ 1:11:45 David Senra Microsoft cannot seem to be very impressive when it was just a couple of guys in Albuquerque writing basic interpreters for a market of a few thousand hobbyists, as computer users at the time were called.
Henry Ford's Autobiography
- ▶ 25:43 David Senra Like think about Microsoft and Apple's like a kind of a good parallel to that.
The Biography of Steve Jobs (The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader)
- ▶ 28:54 David Senra The twenty-six-year-old CEO of Microsoft made the trip fairly often since his company worked closely with Apple in programming languages. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 30:08 David Senra It, you have an understanding of exactly who he is, how extreme he is, and then it ends in the Microsoft IPO. 3 times in the scene
- ▶ 58:04 David Senra Reaching an agreement with Microsoft was absolutely critical to laying the foundation of Apple to be saved. 2 times in the scene
- ▶ 58:15 David Senra Microsoft would need to publicly announce a five-year commitment to provide office, so Microsoft Office for the Mac, and then a hundred, and then make an investment of a hundred and fifty million dollars in Apple.