Lesson #1: Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast
In 2007 Paul Graham, the founder of Y-Combinator, penned an essay titled Microsoft is Dead. The thesis of the article was that Microsoft had become irrelevant thanks to the combination of the internet, Mac computers and Google’s services. In fact at the time, Y-Combinator didn’t bother inviting Microsoft to its demo days to meet any of their startups, but did invite Yahoo which at the time was a more relevant company.
I was at Microsoft from 2002 until 2019 and pretty much agreed that Microsoft was essentially dead as an innovative tech company in 2007.
Under Steve Ballmer, the CEO at the time, the company was good at extracting money and building software for business customers. However the company also tried and failed to build any compelling products in every new space it tried. The company tried and failed to build a compelling mobile operating system, consumer email service, social networking app, search engine, or music services. It also tried and failed at building hardware with the failure of the tablet PC or Zune to take hold.
That entire time period ended up being described as Microsoft’s Lost Decade. I remember as an employee during that decade noticing that the stock price was always $27± $2. It was never much lower than $25 nor did it go past $29 for my first decade as an employee. The stock price was around $34 the day Steve Ballmer announced he was stepping down on August 23rd 2013,
Under Steve Ballmer, the CEO at the time, the company was good at extracting money and building software for business customers. However the company also tried and failed to build any compelling products in every new space it tried. The company tried and failed to build a compelling mobile operating system, consumer email service, social networking app, search engine, or music services. It also tried and failed at building hardware with the failure of the tablet PC or Zune to take hold.
That entire time period ended up being described as Microsoft’s Lost Decade. I remember as an employee during that decade noticing that the stock price was always $27± $2. It was never much lower than $25 nor did it go past $29 for my first decade as an employee. The stock price was around $34 the day Steve Ballmer announced he was stepping down on August 23rd 2013,
Under Steve Ballmer, the CEO at the time, the company was good at extracting money and building software for business customers. However the company also tried and failed to build any compelling products in every new space it tried. The company tried and failed to build a compelling mobile operating system, consumer email service, social networking app, search engine, or music services. It also tried and failed at building hardware with the failure of the tablet PC or Zune to take hold.
That entire time period ended up being described as Microsoft’s Lost Decade. I remember as an employee during that decade noticing that the stock price was always $27± $2. It was never much lower than $25 nor did it go past $29 for my first decade as an employee. The stock price was around $34 the day Steve Ballmer announced he was stepping down on August 23rd 2013,
