Bill Gates Reveals Secret of Microsoft's Success

Hugh Pickens writes "Bill Gates, in a interview with the BBC, revealed the secret of Microsoft's success: 'Most of our competitors were very poorly run. They did not understand how to bring in people with business experience and people with engineering experience and put them together,' said Gates. 'They did not think about software in this broad way. They did not think about tools or efficiency. They would therefore do one product, but would not renew it to get it to the next generation.' Mitch Kapor, founder of the Lotus Corporation, has a different view: 'Claims by Microsoft that people were buying the software because it was good are pretty self-serving. I'd like to smoke what he's smoking.' Gates also said that he took a 'conservative balance sheet approach' to running Microsoft explaining that he wanted 'great financial strength so we would have the flexibility to do software in the new way, or whatever we wanted to do.'"

Comments

Notes user here...

[Otter]

Mitch Kapor, founder of the Lotus Corporation, has a different view: 'Claims by Microsoft that people were buying the software because it was good are pretty self-serving. I'd like to smoke what he's smoking.

I'd be afraid to smoke what they apparently put in the crack pipes at Lotus, at least in the Notes division.

Re:Bill was handed a monopoly ... and he learned.

[Spy der Mann]

Yes, their competitors made mistakes. So did Microsoft.

Microsoft Bob.
Microsoft Blackbird.
Etc.

And by Etc., you must mean Vista :)

*yawn*

[Tom]

Rich CEO says success of his company is due to his own smarts and foresight. News at 11:15 (we need the other 15 minutes for the dupe).

Re:Thus the "handed" portion

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and CP/M and p-system were more expensive, and thus DOS became the dominant system.

Offering a product people want to buy, at a cheaper price than their competitors. Those bastards.

Re:So it's not...

[dotancohen]

..."Jolt" Cola after all. No, it was a trash can.

In TFA (sorry, yeah, I know) Bill mentions how he and Paul Allen pulled the source code of an operating system out of a trash can. Of course, this has long been suspected of Vista.