

The Secret to Bill Gates' Success - ComputerGuru
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7464074.stm

======
ashwinl
Summary:

(1) People, people, people

"Most of our competitors were very poorly run," he tells Fiona Bruce, for The
Money Programme.

"They did not understand how to bring in people with business experience and
people with engineering experience and put them together."

Klunder says it was Mr Gates' ability to understand the business as well as
the technical side that gave Microsoft the edge.

(2) Importance of product iteration

"Most of our competitors were one-product wonders"

(3) Making your venture relevant

"She says of Microsoft that "because they were the operating system, everyone
else in the industry had to deal with them".

"Microsoft's clout was, by this argument, unavoidable."

------
pavelludiq
I might not like Bill Gates, but i do respect some of his qualities. Microsoft
is going to die even faster with out him. But the dieing beast is even more
dangerous.

------
edw519
In this age of false hero worship, glad to see a more balanced treatment. Nice
to see the point of view of those with the "other side of the story". You used
to be able to read about that all the time, not so much these days. This is
good for those who haven't been around long enough to remember _how_ Microsoft
actually managed to do what they did.

~~~
Tamerlin
It is remarkable that so many people seem to think that MS was always a
monopoly, and ignore the fact that before that, Apple was the big dog, and
Microsoft was the puny upstart.

~~~
astine
And that, in point of fact, it was that Apple refused MS the permission to
write software for the Mac that originally motivated MS to get in the OS
business at all.

