It all started in 1975 when Paul Allen spotted the Altair 8800 on the cover of Popular Electronics—a blinking box that barely qualified as a computer but one that would change the tech world forever. Allen handed the mag to Bill Gates, and the two nerds-in-arms holed up in Albuquerque to write a BASIC interpreter for the machine. That bit of code, sold to MITS, marked Microsoft’s birth.
The Microsoft name was a fusion of “microcomputer” and “software”—though nobody expected this humble mashup would crown them the Software King of the World.
The big break came with IBM, the original Big Blue, which tapped Microsoft to deliver the OS for its personal computers. The result: MS-DOS 1.0. Gates licensed it, rather than selling it, and that move made Redmond rich. Vole’s empire was born—not out of shiny hardware, but cold, hard code.
Fifty years of boom, bust, and billions—and a fair share of bruised egos, courtesy of Bill Gates' acerbic wit.
Microsoft employee number 121, Scott Okistill remembers dodging Gates’ go-to insult: “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Instead, Gates handed him a $1 million budget to invent Microsoft’s international division from scratch—despite Oki having no global business experience or foreign language skills.
This led to the establishment of subsidiaries in Japan, the UK, Germany, France, and one additional one in Australia—all of which were profitable in their first year. “
Oki left Microsoft on March 1, 1992, exactly 10 years after he was hired.
Meanwhile, another early hire recalled being drawn into the Vole vortex thanks to family whispers in Spokane: “If that kid [Bill] is anything like those two [Mary and Bill Gates Sr.], that's going to be a great company.”
She’s now a senior director at Microsoft Philanthropies, having spent 33 years there.
Not all memories are sweet. One of the first lawyers at Microsoft said the day the US government sued the company “turned my world upside down for about the next eight years.”
Senior VP Brad Chase orchestrated the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up” for the Windows 95 campaign—though he remains tight-lipped about the track's cost.
What he will admit: “Windows, frankly, was a lousy product in its early days.” But Gates kept hammering it into everyone: “We’re going to bet the company on Windows.”
It turns out the bet paid off. Though, like everything Microsoft touched in those early days, it came with a mess, a lawsuit, and a fortune.
