When you take on a new job, you’ll often be introduced to the company’s history and culture. But very few people hear this information from the mouth of one of the richest people on the planet.
In 1994, Microsoft made an orientation video for new employees featuring the company’s co-founder – Bill Gates. At the age of 39, Gates is the CEO of Microsoft with a huge fortune estimated at $9.35 billion (according to Forbes). Today, that number is more than $136 billion.
In November of this year, the Computer History Archives Project recovered the video and uploaded it to YouTube. In the 15-minute video, Gates welcomes new employees to Microsoft by recounting the company’s founding history and some memorable moments. Even Gates gave incredible praise to his giant technology rival – Apple Corporation.
The most notable point in this video is that Gates is proud that Microsoft will play an important role in the future of technology. Gates tells his employees in the video: “I think this is a great opportunity and it will be very interesting.”
Here are some of the highlights from the video:
Microsoft Origin Story
The story of how Microsoft came to be is well known, but hearing it from Gates firsthand was an exhilarating experience. Not to mention the video also has cheesy sound effects of the 90s.
In the early 1970s, attending the same high school in the Seattle area, Gates and Paul Allen often discussed computers. Even when Gates was taking a preparatory course for Harvard law school, the two of them kept discussing the topic. In the video, Gates says Allen has predicted that technology will make huge strides in the coming years, thanks to advances in microprocessor technology.
Gates recalls that, according to Allen, these leaps would likely be “quite rare and impressive.” Gates said he sometimes asked Allen, “Are you serious about this?”
Apparently Allen was very serious. Before that, in 1975, the MITS company (now no longer on the market) in Albuquerque, New Mexico released the Altair 8800 – one of the first commercially successful personal computers. first. Gates and Allen jointly developed a version of the programming language called BASIC for the Altair computer, so Gates dropped out of Harvard to continue working.
At first, the two applied to work at MITS. A year later, they formed a company together and named it “Micro-Soft”. And the story that follows is what we already know.
The “wrong” computer mice
In the video, Gates says that it took them a year to improve the computer mouse – a very popular device today among personal computer users.
Gates said Microsoft made a computer mouse compatible with PCs in 1983. It was one of the “most profitable” products in Microsoft’s business, but “maybe we made a mistake with this product at first“.
The company originally planned to sell 50,000 mouse products, but Gates said it took a year to sell all of them. But in the end, this product became very expensive when Microsoft “continue to develop the design, directing this product towards a more beautiful and polished look over time“.
In this video, Gates says: “Today, we sell a lot of these products, hundreds of thousands of them in a month.. Now, a Microsoft spokesperson declined to comment on the company’s current sales of this product, but told CNBC Make It that the mouse “remains a major business segment of the company“.
Claims that Apple has had ‘a hugely important milestone’
Microsoft and Apple have a long and complicated relationship as they are both partners and fierce competitors.
In the early 1980s, Microsoft was actually one of Apple’s most prominent software development partners. Gates and his team created Microsoft software specifically for the new Mac line, including the first version of the Microsoft Word application.
In a 1996 documentary, Steve Jobs called some of the first apps Microsoft offered to Apple “bad” and complained that Microsoft products were “boring”. But in this video, Gates has only good things to say about the Macintosh computer (first released in 1984).
Gates said: “The release of the Macintosh was a hugely important milestone. This machine not only makes Apple a company that plays a key role in generating new ideas in the personal computer field, but it also opens the future of graphical interfaces..”
That is, Gates is referring to the graphical user interface (GUI). This interface allows the Macintosh desktop to display icons and images instead of lines of text. Gates said: the tech industry was initially opposed to GUIs, but “Apple bet its company on it“.
Apple made a very wise bet. Home computer users love clicking on icons and images vif their simplicity and aesthetics. Gates explained: “That’s why we started building apps for the Macintosh very early on. We think Apple was right, and we really bet our success on it.“
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