I don’t know about you, but I remember getting my first computer back in the 1980s. It was OK, but quite difficult to use and pretty expensive. In around 1990, I got my first laptop and can remember it cost around £2,000. It wasn’t worth it. Ever since, like most people, I’ve probably changed computers every few years and now have almost a dozen in the house. In fact, you could now call your mobile a computer, as we use it more for those functions with apps and data than for making telephone calls (ed: does anyone make a call these days?).
But then the respected CEO Ken Olsen back in the day believed that no one needed a computer in the home. He said this firmly in the belief that computing was for business and not for consumers. How wrong was he and what happened to that company DEC that he ran?
I blogged about this the other day so why am I blogging about it again today? Well, because Ken Olsen was trying to reinforce the mainframe-based organisation of business, rather than the sudden new arrival of personal computers and, in particular, a strange new company called Microsoft.
Microsoft was born on 4th April 1975.
Founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen – two childhood friends …
… it succeeded mainly due to a deal done with IBM to use their operating systems, MS-DOS. Like Ken Olsen, IBM had no interest in personal computers back then. Big mistake for IBM, who could have dominated the PC market, and major backing for Microsoft who, by the 1990s, became the primary provider of home computing systems and made Bill and Paul billionaires.
The reason for sharing this today – three days after their birthday – is that Bill writes a regular note about what he is thinking. Today, he is thinking about founding Microsoft and what that meant to him. Worth thinking about as Microsoft is only 50 years old! Amazon is just over 30; Meta is 21; and the iPhone is just 18. Things move fast in technology.
Therefore, to celebrate Microsoft’s birthday, here is a summary of Bill Gate’s note:
[Last Friday marked] 50 years since Paul Allen and I officially started Microsoft. Back then, we were just two kids obsessed with computers, convinced that software could unlock a better future—and determined to make that future happen.
We dreamed of a computer on every desk and in every home. In 1975, that sounded like a pipe dream to most people who didn’t even know what a computer was, let alone why they’d want one. But we believed that if we could make this technology accessible and useful, it could change the world.
And it did.
What started as a crazy idea between childhood friends became a company that helped spark the personal computing revolution. That revolution has transformed how people work, create, and connect across every industry and every country.
To think that Microsoft has been part of half a century of progress—from floppy disks to cloud computing, from DOS to AI—is surreal. I feel incredibly lucky to have been part of that journey. I only wish Paul were here to take it all in, too …
To celebrate this milestone, I wanted to share something special: the code that started it all. Altair BASIC was the first software Paul and I ever sold—and the first product Microsoft ever made (back when we still spelled it “Micro-Soft,” with a hyphen). It remains the coolest code I’ve ever written. You can learn the story behind it on Gates Notes now, and even download the original source code yourself to see how it all worked.
