Paul Allen

"Even before Paul Allen and I started the partnership, we were saying: A computer on every desk and in every home. IBM and other people—with resources and skill sets way beyond ours—weren’t aiming for that goal. They didn’t see it as a possibility, so they weren’t pushing as hard to make it a reality. But we could see that it would happen. Moore’s law would make things cheaper and get the software industry to critical mass. Those were big, big goals, and they started early for us. That was our biggest advantage: We aimed higher."

"Steve Ballmer has similarly demonstrated the difference between billionaire-style risk taking and owning a diversified stock portfolio. In March 1989, Microsoft received an unfavorable ruling in its ongoing liti¬ gation with Apple Computer. The software company’s stock plummeted as investors fretted that Microsoft would be blocked from using certain Macintosh-like features in future versions of its Windows operating sys¬ tem. Sales chief Ballmer, who correctly foresaw that Apple would not ulti¬ mately prevail, shelled out $46 million to add to his existing large holdings of Microsoft stock. Three years later, he followed Bill Gates and Paul Allen into the billionaire ranks. By then, the Microsoft shares that Ballmer had purchased for $46 million at a low point in the company’s fortunes were worth more than $350 million."

"Over the years, Gates has occasionally embellished his own legend. He long claimed that his first 13 software customers had gone bankrupt, a tale that underscored the fierce competitiveness of the computer in¬ dustry. “I made that up,” he subsequently conceded.17 Gates also said that between 1970 and 1974, he and Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen developed a computer program that was eventually used in about half the elevators in the United States. This “never happened,” he later ac¬ knowledged.18 Additionally, Gates maintained that it was during the 1970-1974 period that he and Allen began using the phrase that they later repeated endlessly as Microsoft’s creed: “A computer on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software.” In reality, no such company name existed at the time. The famous phrase, which ap¬ parently was not heard around Microsoft until the mid-1980s, evolved from a January 1975 Popular Electronics article heralding “the era of the computer in every home.”1"

"Malcolm Gladwell says you can’t understand Bill Gates’s success without understanding his fortunate personal context: he grew up in a good family, went to a private school equipped with a computer lab, and counted Paul Allen as a childhood friend. But perhaps you can’t understand Malcolm Gladwell without understanding his historical context as a Boomer (born in 1963)."

"I was eager to get a toehold in the nascent industry. If you believe in the laws of attraction, they were working when I got a call from an investment banker who said Paul Allen, a cofounder of Microsoft, had around 25 percent of AOL stock—and now wanted to get out of it."

"“Let me tell you the whole story,” he began. The reason Paul Allen wanted to sell his block of AOL was to avoid a conflict of interest: Microsoft was about to come out with a new operating system that would directly compete with AOL. Bill cited Microsoft’s 90 percent share of the PC software market and said, “We will soon have our own web portal. It’s gonna be called The Microsoft Network—MSN—and it will be a dial-up internet service provider (ISP) tucked inside the release of Windows 95.” And then Bill Gates issued the real warning he wanted to convey: “And when we release this, it’s gonna be very difficult for customers that upgrade to Windows 95 to be able to find AOL… and we think Microsoft Network is gonna be a huge success. “So, you know, I don’t want you making the mistake of putting your money into something that we’re gonna put out of business.” This was rather brass knuckles of Bill, and sometimes this was his way; it is how you get to 90 percent market share of anything."

"Ticketmaster was a public company controlled by Paul Allen and run by a blustery caricature of a loudmouthed but incredibly effective lawyer named Fred Rosen, who had brashly led it to total domination of the ticketing business for live events throughout the world. Thank god he was a Luddite, or we wouldn’t have gotten the chance to buy it. When asked about the idea of putting ticket sales online, his reaction was “We’ll do it after everybody else does it. Right now it’s just a waste of resources.”"

"I didn’t know any of this when I cold-called Paul, thinking he might find the idea of a combination of Ticketmaster and HSN compelling. He told me of his frustrations with Rosen, and how he believed the company should jump-start online ticketing. Eureka—that was the seed and… suddenly I did see the future and got so excited about the online possibilities that I couldn’t race fast enough to get a deal done. I told Paul that if he traded his stock in Ticketmaster for stock in HSN, I’d deal with Rosen and he could get out of that tortured relationship. I’d dealt all my life with far more obstreperous characters. Paul Allen quickly agreed and ended up with 11 percent of my company and joined our board. A year or so later he sold his shares, doubling his money (not that he needed it, but if he’d kept his shares, he’d have become far richer than the Midas he already was)."