James Wallace - Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire

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Praise for HARD DRIVE by James Wallace and Jim Erickson

A stupendous success story. This is the most informative book yet on Bill Gates and Microsoft. Washington Post

Remarkable.... [Hard Drive] will almost certainly leave you wistful. No, not wishing that you worked for Microsoft, which sounds like what you might experience if you combined Marine boot camp, a fraternity party, and, a trip to the zoo. The book will make you wonder why you didnt buy Microsoft stock when it went public.

Wall Street Journal

Wallace and Erickson display an admirable sense of journalistic detachment and detail, plumbing the depths of Gatess experience to see what makes him tick. Everyone from Gates on down to his ex-Scoutmaster seems to have chatted with the authors.

San Francisco Chronicle

This well-written book deserves an audience beyond the computer literate. Packed with anecdotes, Hard Drive helps show that from the beginning of his career to today, Gates has always been something more than a 98-pound megalomaniac.

Detroit Free Press

An engaging, almost classic tale of a boy who finds power in gadgets and then wont let go. Los Angeles Times

An exciting tale, told in racy style, with plenty of detail and well researched quotations, all focused on the enigmatic personality of Bill Gates. London Financial Times

A biting biography and computer industry expose.

Publishers Weekly

Captivating reading, more enthralling than any thriller Nature

HARD

DRIVE

Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire

James Wallace Jim Erickson

HarperBusiness

To my mother and father; and to Linda Joyce Buzbee, because a promise is, after all, a promise.

James

To my mother, father, and to Nancy.

Jim

A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1992 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. It is here reprinted by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

hard drive . Copyright 1992 by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

HarperCollins books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information please write: Special Markets Department, HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

First HarperBusiness edition published 1993.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wallace, James. 1947-

Hard drive : Bill Gates and the making of the Microsoft empire / James Wallace, Jim Erickson. 1st HarperBusiness ed. p. cm.

Reprint. Originally published: New York: Wiley, 1992.

Includes index.

ISBN 0-88730-629-2 (pbk.)

1. Gates, Bill, 1956- . 2. Microsoft CorporationHistory. 3. BusinessmenUnited StatesBiography. 4. Computer software industryUnited StatesHistory.

I. Erickson, Jim. II. Title [HD9696.C62G3378 1993]

338.4'70053'092dc2092-54845

96 97 98 /RRDH 10

Acknowledgments

T

his is not a book about computers or the dazzling tech

-nology that sparked one of the worlds great revolutions

less than two decades ago. Rather, it is a story about people, a remarkable collection of individuals led by one man, Bill Gates, whose drive, genius, vision, and entrepreneurial spirit created one of the great success stories in the history of American business. We wanted to write a book that would appeal as much to those who know nothing about computers as it would to those who regard these machines as the most important thing in their lives. We hope we have done that.

The book grew out of a series of stories on Gates and Microsoft published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper in May of 1991. The subsequent project, a book-length profile of Gates, took the better part of a year to complete and was undertaken without the help or cooperation of Microsoft. Even so, more than 150 people, many of them past and current employees and executives of Microsoft, were interviewed. We are indebted to everyone who helped us tell this story, regardless of how much of what they told us found its way into the book.

We would like to begin by thanking J.D. Alexander, executive editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, who not only allowed us the time to research and write this book but also gave his support and generously allowed some of the papers photographs of Gates to be reprinted in the book.

Others at the paper we would like to thank are Lytton Smith, who helped with the research, and all the people in systems, who provided technical assistance.

We are deeply grateful to our publisher, John Wiley & Sons, who saw the possibilities of such a book and gave us the opportunity to do it.

No one deserves more credit, or thanks, than our editor, Roger Scholl, whose patience, editorial guidance, hard work, and encouragement were invaluable. Anyone who writes a book should be so fortunate to have such an understanding editor.

This book would not have been possible without the tireless efforts of several others at John Wiley & Sons, including Marcia Samuels, production manager, and Elizabeth Doble, director of production. Our appreciation goes to all those at Impressions in Madison, Wisconsin, who spent many hours copyediting.

Finally, special thanks to many good friends who saw us through the months this project took, and who continuously offered their supportin particular, to Mary Williams, Angelo Bruscas, Ceceilia Dominique, and Dick Clever.

In addition to interviews, our research was based on a number of books, national magazines, newspapers, and trade publications. The books included Fire in the Valley by Paul Frei- berger and Michael Swaine; Hackers by Steven Levy; Blue Magic by James Chposky and Ted Leonsis; The Making of Microsoft by Daniel Ichbiah and Susan Knepper; and Programmers at Work by Susan Lammers. The newspapers upon which we based our research included the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Seattle Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, LA Times and San Jose Mercury News. National magazines included Forbes, Fortune, Money, Time, Newsweek, and Business Week, as well as the trade publications PC Week and InfoWorld.

For those curious about such things, this book was written on a Leading Edge compatible PC with an 8088 chip and XyWrite word processing program.

James Wallace and Jim Erickson Seattle, February 1992

Contents

Prologue I

The Early Years 5

Its Going to Happen

The Microkids

Hitching a Ride with Big Blue

Growing Pains

King of the Hill

Index

HARD

DRIVE

PROLOGUE

The Winds of Fortune

W

illiam Gates III, chairma n of the largest computer soft- ware company on earth, stood nervously at the front of

the ballroom of the 308-foot cruise yacht New Yorker. He was about to unveil Microsofts fifth and latest version of the most popular piece of software ever created, a computer operating system known as MS-DOS.

It was to be the biggest launch of a software product in computer industry history. More than 500 people had turned out on a humid Tuesday evening in New York City in the summer of 1991 to board the yachtplayfully dubbed DOS Boat to listen to Gates and his corporate sidekick, Microsoft operating systems chief Steve Ballmer, make an impassioned sales pitch for MS-DOS 5.0. Both industry analysts and the press had gathered for the gala event, which promised free food, music by jazz master Dave Brubeck, and a five-hour cruise on the Hudson River and around the New York City harbor. Computer hardware and software executives had flown in from around the country to get a glimpse of Gates and to listen to the industrys