On April 4, 1975, two young visions, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, began to do something bold: building a software company for the emerging world of personal computing. Seeing them? A computer on every office and every home. While the program was not considered an industry, this idea felt radical. Today, the Prophet feels.
I was not aware, knowing that one day I was part of that trip. Not for myself, but I was seven years old when I was 7 years old when Microsoft It started.
In fact, when I came to the United States from India as a young engineer in the late eighties, I thought I was traveling to Los Angeles – I was expecting long buildings and cinema stars. “I didn’t realize that this means Louisiana. But I found my feet. I learned to love eating three meals daily (going when you are a shattered student who does not eat meat), and in the end she fell off from a small but promising company called Microsoft, which is based in Washington State called Redmond.
As a person who spent 27 Microsoft 50 years old in the company, I was lucky to try that trip from the inside – as an engineer, a leader, and now as a lifetime and a shareholder. Therefore, on this distinctive anniversary, I want to present a personal reflection, not only for what Microsoft has accomplished, but on what made it carry, develop and lead – again.
Specific vision
For any founder, the early Microsoft story is a strong reminder: it is not possible to determine a bold and clear vision – with an uncomfortable focus on size and accessibility – only on a company, but category. Great companies not only build; They build the conditions of global adoption tomorrow.
Microsoft’s success was never about building the most expensive programs. It was related to building programs that can be accessed for all in the world.
The original strategy was elegant in its simplicity: build high -value, high -sized programs, and affordable prices that would provide significant production benefits and can expand worldwide. Windows and Office were not just products – Flywheels were. Windows, associated with a prosperous environment OEM, bringing computing to the masses. Office, the unified in one suite, has become the productivity system.
These twin engines have helped create Microsoft – and are still relevant today, even with the development of the nature of computing.
I saw this directly as one of the first team members on Windows NT. We used to build a new 32-bit operating system from the zero-point-not an old thing but invented something new. It took nearly five years of intensive work. For a while, I came to the office at 5:30 am, walking in the halls with a yellow sticky pillow, and signs of signs that were shattered overnight from stress tests with a yellow sticky note: “Do not restart until Soma looks at it.”
It was not glamorous. But it was important.
Four waves, one mentality
Over the course of fifty years, Microsoft has played (sometimes rebuilt) four major technology platform episodes:
- Customer/server
- Internet/mobile phone
- clouds
- Amnesty International
Not every wave was smoothly – Microsoft’s strength often was how it responded, not how it started. We are late on the Internet, as Netscape seized an early Share, but we quickly moved to form the web age with Internet Explorer. In the mobile phone, we missed the mark. In the cloud, we started shortly after that – but today, we lead. In artificial intelligence, we were before the curve from the beginning in terms of our direct investments with the partnership partnership with Openai. Through all these transformations, one characteristic was necessary: ready to learn, adapt and build again and not just rest on the cave.
And behind this mentality, Microsoft had three only three senior executives – gates gates, Steve Palmer, and Satia Nadila – each of which brought his own vision to bear specific qualities, incomparable curiosity (as President Brad Smith Explain through Geekwire’s Microsoft@50 It happened). But I would like to add that each of them has the ability to connect points. It is not only about gathering information, but also to collect broken signals apparently in a coherent path forward. This combination, more than any technical skill or an administrative style, is what great driving requires – and all three are delivered in the gardon.
Bill Gates Microsoft foundation – not only clarifying a bold vision (“A computer on every office and every home) But helping to form the software industry itself. He once told me, “Most of my decisions were wrong – I got a few things right and it turned out that they were great because these few good decisions had a great impact and influence.”
Steve Palmer took over during a complex transition – while we stumbled on the mobile phone, he commanded Microsoft. First, Microsoft is directly placed on the institution’s map. Second, laying the foundation for our entry into the cloud. This work was the basis for all Microsoft and the leadership position in the cloud today.
Satia? We have put on the cloud map with the tremendous strategy, focus and implementation. Also, it made everything corresponding – culturally and strategically – with Microsoft’s re -discovery of its mission while leading us to the era of artificial intelligence.
Satia Nadella and re -seize culture
In 2014, Satya Nadella took matters in Microsoft during the time when many believed that the best days of the company were behind. Following this was one of the most prominent companies’ re -invention in history.
Under the leadership of Satia, Microsoft re -defined itself As a company that relies on the purpose-on a task to enable each person and organized on this planet to achieve more.
He re-presented the “growth mentality” as the cultural heartbeat, as Microsoft has transformed from “knowing everything” to “Learn-Coll”. His logo? He competed hard, but staying modest. Be open. Be curious. Be friendly.
Satia was known because we were engineers in Microsoft in the early 1990s. What I have always emerged is the clarity of the purpose and its fixed hand. For him, the culture was not a transformation at the level of the surface-the basis for everything else was coming.
This cultural reset has created Microsoft conditions to face smart and calculated risks – for partnership instead of going on its own, building platforms that exceed us, and betting on the great ideas that may reshape industry. From adopting an open source with GitHub to expanding the ecosystem through acquisitions such as LinkedIn And Minecraft, to falsify the game change partnership with Openai- The second Microsoft Law was bold, facing abroad, cooperative but it is competitive and deep strategic.
In one of the moments of this matter, it came during a dinner in 2021. Gitap Cubelot has not yet released, but Satia was already talking about it with the type of energy that you do not forget. He said, “This can change how to build software developers,” not as evidence of sales, but as a profound personal faith. This is Satia in a nutshell: modest in tone, but there is no relentlessness in conviction.
This early belief in the future of artificial intelligence has since been translated into a tangible leadership-from GitHub Copilot to Microsoft 365 Copilot into azure position as a transition platform to build the works of the work of Amnesty International and its operation to the AI Agenic world of institutions and consumers. What started as a cultural reset has become a plan for permanent importance-an innovation engine at the company level that allows Microsoft to keep pace with bullets.
Amnesty International: Fourth Wave
We are now firmly in the era of artificial intelligence – the fourth main wave. The most exciting me is not just technology but the capabilities. The ability to enhance global productivity, expand access to intelligence, reshape the way we build, learn and create.
And again, the microsoft is in the foreground – not only with products, but with the purpose.
Satia also told me during the last Fireside chat at the annual meeting of Madrona, “The world will need more account.” But he explained that when the value of the real institution is not discovered – whether in infrastructure, models or applications -.
We are still very early.
He also wanders on how to make Microsoft AI’s progress – it converts the focus from technical standards to the broader economic impact as a real sign of artificial public intelligence (AGI).
He told me: “My formula for when can we say that Aji has arrived? When, for example, the developed world grows by 10 %, which may have been the peak of the industrial revolution.” “This is a good standard for me.”
What lasts
After 50 years, Microsoft remains not only related – but necessary. Why?
Because in its essence, the company did not stop believing in its mission. It has evolved how it was delivered in that task, but North Star remained the same: Make technology available, build tools that can and pay productivity, and always bet on people.
This belief has always focused on one idea – productivity. From the first days of programs to the latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, Microsoft’s work asked a simple but deep question: How do we help people to be more productive? Whether they work, build, study, play or communicate – the goal was to make life better through technology.
This task was not more clear to me than the developer department. The tools of developers were more than a symbol – they were about empowering people who were building platforms that move the world forward. In Microsoft, developers have always been more than users – they are essential to the company’s identity. Everyone is important, but developers are in the heart of the platform – the identity of Microsoft.
This lesson formed me – the first time I entered building 2 as a new nervous employment in 1989 until the moment I entered a meeting and realized that I am now the person who made difficult calls. Microsoft gave me the opportunity to contribute, lead and grow.
More than anything else, gave me a seat in the front row to one of the most unusual transformations in the history of business. The transformation is not only defined by what the company has created, but through how it is tolerated, its development and its leadership through every transformation of a platform and every generation of leadership.
I came to Microsoft as an engineer, not sure if you belong. I stayed for 27 years because it was a place to believe in me – and let me believe in what is possible.
Here are the fifty years next of the possibility.
The opinions expressed in cutting comments Fortune.com are only the opinions of their authors and do not necessarily reflect opinions and beliefsluck.
Read more:
- How Paul Allen and Bill Gates It fell on the idea of Microsoft After riding a bicycle through many other starting ideas
- Satia Nadila Microsoft has made 10 times more valuable In his contract as an executive president. Can it remain in the era of artificial intelligence?
- Microsoft is 50 years old as the second largest company in the world– Drilling non -backwardness from artificial intelligence
- Illustic cultural heritage from Microsoft at 50From ClipPy to the blue screen of death
This story was originally shown on Fortune.com
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2025-04-02 15:01:00
