Pitch #4

Pg. 91-120 19

• Gates respected John Malone, the chairman of Tele-Communications Inc.; they were alike in many ways
• understood both business and the technology
• fiercely driven, blunt, and ruthless
• top of each industry (cable and computer)
• at Microsoft, Gates was making a significant bet that the information highway would become a major growth sector for the company
• he had approved spending more than $100 million in 1993 on research and development of technology that would give it control of that pipeline through which digital information would flow
• for years, Gates had been criticized by his peers within the industry for taking innovations that had been developed elsewhere and simply improving them à a sore point with Gates, who would go to great lengths to argue that Microsoft created innovative software
• Gates was well aware that no high-tech company had ever made the transition from one technological era to the next
• was convinced that interactive television would drive the digital revolution and foster the creation of the information highway
• Gates hired the best and the brightest to work with the Advanced Technology Group at Microsoft
• Gates relied a lot on his sidekick, Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft’s #1 propeller head
• Gates’s wife-to-be = Melinda French
• in briefings about projects that needed a final approval from Gates, he always asks some tough questions and often screams at someone, throw something, or shout his familiar phrase, “This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of!”
• the group who worked in creating Windows 95 was named the ‘Marvel team’, named after Marvel Comics