In 1975, 22-year-old computer programmer Paul Allen got his hands on the January issue of Popular Electronics magazine. Like another Silicon Valley success story, that tale began in a Harvard dorm. To understand Microsoft’s approach to product, we need to first understand the ideologies that shaped the company during its earliest days and how this drove Microsoft’s approach to growth.
Why Microsoft’s history of focusing on quantity, not quality, has worked incredibly well.Here are a few of the things we’ll be looking at in this article: Microsoft’s journey from a scrappy, opportunistic startup in New Mexico to a global corporate software giant is a fascinating story of ambition, power, and hubris.
In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. However, despite its role in fundamentally shaping the landscape of modern computing, Microsoft has an undeserved reputation as a boring company that makes boring products. With the possible exception of the earliest pioneers of Silicon Valley, such as IBM, Xerox, and Bell Labs, it’s hard to think of a company that has had a more profound, lasting impact on the world of technology than Microsoft.
