Steve Ballmer

Yep. Something we touched on a little bit is the benefit of scaling with OEMs. This was sort of the contrast against Apple, where I said Apple was sort of always going to be a niche player by the way that they designed and built and packaged everything themselves. Apple is in many ways like the Amex, where Microsoft is the Visa.

Yeah, on our Visa episode, it just became so clear that Visa could sort of quickly take over the world at MasterCard by being an open network where they didn't have to do all the work to scale themselves.

Yeah, on our Visa episode, it just became so clear that Visa could sort of quickly take over the world at MasterCard by being an open network where they didn't have to do all the work to scale themselves.

They could distribute to a bank, partner with a bank, and then boom, each of the banks that was on their network could independently scale at their own rate, which created, obviously, compounding effects for how fast Visa and MasterCard could scale. The same can be said of Windows.

They could distribute to a bank, partner with a bank, and then boom, each of the banks that was on their network could independently scale at their own rate, which created, obviously, compounding effects for how fast Visa and MasterCard could scale. The same can be said of Windows.

I think the Microsoft OEM team for Windows was like 20 people or something. Before the enterprise, in this era that we're talking about, the group of people responsible for go-to-market for Windows was really small. They sold some retail, but the team was just about, hey, make sure HP and... Compaq and Dell and Gateway. Exactly.

I think the Microsoft OEM team for Windows was like 20 people or something. Before the enterprise, in this era that we're talking about, the group of people responsible for go-to-market for Windows was really small. They sold some retail, but the team was just about, hey, make sure HP and... Compaq and Dell and Gateway. Exactly.

That was their go-to-market, and it makes your scaling unbelievably efficient.

That was their go-to-market, and it makes your scaling unbelievably efficient.

Dude, you are getting a Dell. Yeah. Similarly, I think the fact that they went international early was this very powerful constraint where it meant that every time they shipped software, they had to make it globally ready quickly.

Dude, you are getting a Dell. Yeah. Similarly, I think the fact that they went international early was this very powerful constraint where it meant that every time they shipped software, they had to make it globally ready quickly.

And so that meant that if there was any sort of network effects to your software, like anything becoming a standard, Microsoft was just way better positioned to become the standard than anyone else was. And on top of there being network effects, there's also scale economies where A word processor is a word processor.

And so that meant that if there was any sort of network effects to your software, like anything becoming a standard, Microsoft was just way better positioned to become the standard than anyone else was. And on top of there being network effects, there's also scale economies where A word processor is a word processor.

The fact that they forced themselves to be international early meant that every product after that also had to figure out how to do all the localization and training and all of that to get all those effects too.

The fact that they forced themselves to be international early meant that every product after that also had to figure out how to do all the localization and training and all of that to get all those effects too.

Yes, exactly. And they just realized that so early. They also realized that most people who were doing some sort of localization would do a shoddy job. They would think about it as lesser than the US market. And so they just did a good job at localization. They just cared.

Yes, exactly. And they just realized that so early. They also realized that most people who were doing some sort of localization would do a shoddy job. They would think about it as lesser than the US market. And so they just did a good job at localization. They just cared.

They thought of it as like, this is a strategic pillar that in every country, everyone experiences our software to the same quality because it's our brand everywhere. And I don't know, I just think that is not how the rest of the industry thought about it.

They thought of it as like, this is a strategic pillar that in every country, everyone experiences our software to the same quality because it's our brand everywhere. And I don't know, I just think that is not how the rest of the industry thought about it.

On top of all of this, the way that they executed it through subsidiaries was pretty genius. Redmond did not control international. They spun up country managers and subsidiaries in each of these countries in a ton of countries.