If you had bought ONE share on March 13, , you would now have split-adjusted shares. If Microsoft had entered the building in nicely pressed suits, beardless and well groomed, would they have attracted more investors? But is that fair? Does my hair, scruffy beard, hoodie, and flip-flops make me a less effective salesman and communicator? Two quick stories… One early-marriage anniversary I booked a room at Little America for Sherri and myself.
Part of the anniversary included a dinner at the Little America restaurant. The house salad was an entire, uncut wedge of lettuce with a variety of odd trimmings and foofery. While we ate I noticed an old man going from table to table speaking with the patrons, apparently panhandling. He was wearing a bizarre combination of clothing. Blue polyester pants…the kind that has no belt loops, just the button strap across the front. Terribly battered old-man pleather shoes that neither laced nor latched.
And a lime green sweater that was so thin at the elbows and shoulders you could see his yellowing white shirt underneath. Eventually he got to our table… Transient: What a lovely couple. How are you young folks doing tonight?
Me: Fine, thanks. Transient: Enjoying your meal? Well, my name is Earl Holding and I own this hotel. Please enjoy your stay and your dinner and feel free to notify me should you need anything at all. Me: Um, ok. My Head: Impossible. Get the Insider App. Click here to learn more. A leading-edge research firm focused on digital transformation. Good Subscriber Account active since Shortcuts.
Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. It often indicates a user profile. Log out. US Markets Loading H M S In the news. Jay Yarow. Bill Gates is now giving away the billions he made from Microsoft. Andrea Lewis became a fiction writer and freelance journalist. Maria Wood sued Microsoft just 2 years later. Paul Allen has spent his billions on sports teams, startups, and much more.
Bob O'Rear went onto be a cattle rancher. Marc McDonald left Microsoft because it was getting big, but ended up back at the company, anyway. Gordon Letwin stayed with Microsoft longer than anyone other than Bill Gates. Steve Wood went on to found Wireless Services Corp. Bob Wallace was a fan of psychedelic drugs and founded a software company after Microsoft. Jim Lane went on to do his own software company.
Here's one more look at the gang from And here's a photo of them from that Microsoft put together when Bill Gates was leaving the company. That was a long time ago. What's Microsoft doing now? Loading Something is loading. Speaking of good fortune, Fortune magazine was granted inside access to Gates, his executive and legal teams, and their Wall Street partners in the months leading up to the IPO.
That arrangement resulted in a terrific fly-on-the-wall story published four months later. For some reason the version on Fortune's site has been stripped clean of paragraph indentations, which makes it a challenge to read; here's one of the many.
Gates was not at all anxious to go public, but Microsoft was bumping up against federal regulations governing the number of private stockholders a company can have before being required to register with the SEC see Facebook, People get confused because the stock price doesn't reflect your financial performance. And to have a stock trader call up the chief executive and ask him questions is uneconomic -- the ball bearings shouldn't be asking the driver about the grease.
Crafting the prospectus was a labor of dental surgery, as the driving goal became guarding against future litigation that might be fueled by even the slightest hint that Microsoft was hyping its future prospects. Look which current CEO pops up as the voice of doom and gloom in a description of one meeting with the Wall Streeters:. For ten hours Gates, Microsoft president and COO Jon Shirley, and other managers exhaustively described their parts of the business and fielded questions.
Surprisingly, the Microsoft crew tended to be more conservative and pessimistic than the interrogators. Steven A. Ballmer, 30, a vice president sometimes described as Gates's alter ego, came up with so many scenarios for Microsoft's demise that one banker cracked: ''I'd hate to hear you on a bad day.
If you'd like to read what they finally came up with, you can read the prospectus here.
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