1. Mike Maples said, “My job is to get a fair share of the software applications market, and to me that’s one hundred percent.” In 1994, Steve Ballmer in his best shouting voice reported increases for Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Office shouting “its Market share, market share, market share”, “keeping competitors grasping for oxygen”.
2. In 1990, when Microsoft Excel had no chance of stealing market share from Lotus, Gates stated, “if everyone at Lotus went on vacation for a year, we’d still have a hard time competing with 1-2-3 because its momentum would still be there. Once you get to the dominate position, the rewards are incredible.” The potential rewards are commensurate with the challenges of unseating the market leader. Momentum is created from customer loyalty, reputation, promoting and pricing software, by training users, and by navigating the strategic challenges in an industry characterized by high fixed and low marginal costs.
3. In the 1980 Microsoft Excel far outsold Lotus Jazz for the Macintosh. Gates observed, “one the market anoints a leader the entire universe of third-party support - all the books, all the templates, all the training, all the stores stocking - heads in the direction of the leader, too”
4. The software industry lowered the cost of personal computing as the user learned more about the software and it is likely the software will improve; more members join the network; scale of economies in production reduce cost; software helps risk-aversion giving more understanding about complex system and thus adoption is less likely to contain unknown risks; and adoption of a given technology spawns various sub technologies and technical infrastructure that make it increasingly difficult to displace the technology.
5. Nathan Myhrvold predicted software application leaders get 60 to 70 percent of the market and the runner up gets 60-70 percent of the remainder. The market share leader in operating system gets 90 percent of the market and the runner-up gets 90 percent of the remainder. In 1995, Microsoft office had a 90 percent share of the suite segment of the market, exactly what Myhrvold’s earlier remarks had predicted.
6. The consistency of the positive feedback cycle phenomenon suggests that people see considerable benefits in choosing technology that others have also chose. Customers are not force to choose a software. Customer evaluation of the technical, financial, and ancillary benefits of the Software determine the stickiness of the products. Gates would truculently invite critics to name a Microsoft product that’s successful and isn’t a top rated product - “we don’t have one”.
7. Early at Microsoft, Gates reasoned that dramatic improvements in microprocessor would fuel the growth of Microsoft and that of the larger PC industry. The idea that the exponential improving semiconductor technology would create new business opportunities was a prevalent belief. The fact that software developers could not keep pace with the hardware side of business meant plentiful business opportunities for software developers without the imminent fear of oversupply. Gates advocated for commercializing the distribution of software in order to encourage software developers to continue to invest their labor.
8. Gates pushed for sales volume and profits. Only by achieving high volume could software developers overcome the problem of high fixed costs in developing sophisticated products. In 1981, Gates preached, “It’s only through volume that you can offer reasonable software at a low price.”
9. Nathan Myhrvold was born in 1959 and raised by a single parent, his mother. At age two Myhrvold knew he wanted to be a scientist, at 14 graduate from High School, from UCLA at 19 in Batchelors in mathematics and a masters in geophysics and space physics, and Princeton at 23, in mathematical economics and a Phd in theoretical physics. Myhrvold became the de facto helmsman piloting Microsofts technical direction. In 1995, Myhrvold rose to the position of vice president and was a member of Microsoft’s six person office of the president. Myhrvold influential counsel assisted in the direction of strategic planning at Microsoft.
10. At Microsoft, feedback loops went from the marketplace back to the company, from employees to management, and from management back to employees. Gates paid close attention to installing circuits that would serve as conduits of feedback in his own company. For Gates, detailed feedback was an article of faith, and his lieutenants preached feedback with no less fervor. Self-organizing behavior survives on positive feedback in the system. Ballmer said, “if you have a problem you don’t think is getting resolved, well, you are not only allowed to, you are encouraged to talk to your manager’s manager, your manager’s manager’s manager, or whatever it takes to get that opinion heard.”
11. In 1993, a watershed year for Microsoft the company began looking to the future. Microsoft rivals were TCI - cable TV - $4.1 billion, Bell Atlantic ($12.9 billion), Time Warner ($14.5), and AT&T ($67 billion). Myhrvold counsel Gates to think big: Microsoft had cash, the technical expertise, and a vision of new digital possibilities.
12. Microsoft received a $100 million a month in its cash reserves, in retained earnings, each month. Yet it took far longer than a month to negotiate a $100 million deal. Opportunities were presenting themselves and it would take longer to close a $10 million deal than a $100 million deal. If Microsoft limited itself to a handful of giant deals, it would miss smaller companies and other ventures that might add greater yield strategically in the long run. Myhrvold emphasized Microsoft would not be able to single-handedly create an empire on the information highway. Microsoft would have to enter into joint ventures and other partnerships in earnst. Myhrvold understood the peril of jumping into deals as soon as possible. IBM $3.3 billion investment in joint ventures and other external investments during the course of ten years was valued at about $35 million. A lesson on how not to go about expanding a web of technology partners.
13. Microsoft success in transitioning to a network-centered computing structure, entertainment, publishing, telecommunications, consumer electronics, and other converging industries depended on how well the technical elite understood and worked with representatives from industries far removed from personal computing.
14. Siegelman defined MSN as a superset of private and public online services (visa, ecommerce, subscriptions, search engines). The primary competition was the internet itself. Customers could connect with information providers directly without MSN serving as an intermediary. To the extent that Microsoft could successfully persuade users and information providers to adopts it proprietary software for secure transactions on the net, a toll road would be possible. Gates had confidence that a large market would develop and make his propriety software and business come into demand. Gates believed millions of dollars would begin to pour into development. Broadband customers would not switch software that they had become accustom too. Microsoft would compete with the heavy weights in entertainment, communications, and other industries. Gates identified multi-billion-dollar businesses for each broad category of future online services. He assigned shopping and advertising an estimate of $100 billion of annual revenue.