We negotiated a non-exclusive deal with IBM for the operating system, allowing us to license it to others, which was crucial for our growth.

The transition from stock options to stock awards at Microsoft was crucial for employee motivation and addressing cultural issues after the dot-com bubble burst.

When I left the company, we grew from zero revenues to about $150 million in recurring revenue, leading to a sale to Microsoft for around $800 million.

The slogan of Microsoft was 'a computer on every desk and in every home running Microsoft software', reflecting our vision for personal computing.

Microsoft's original vision of having a computer on every desk in every home attracted the right type of people and helped build the culture necessary for its success.

By the mid to late 80s, we still felt overshadowed by IBM, which was the dominant force in the computing industry at that time.

Microsoft acquired both our product and contracting companies in 2014, which was unexpected but beneficial due to the demand for skilled developers at that time.

After IBM divorced us in 1990, we realized we needed to figure out how to build our own enterprise sales strategy, which was not Bill Gates' passion area.

The acquisition of Sun Microsystems has been our most profitable acquisition, already paying for itself, and we are making significant profits from it despite initial concerns about our hardware business declining.