Microsoft's misunderstood era: Ben Gilbert of 'Acquired' on the tech giant's most pivotal years

GeekWire

Technology, Tech News, News

4.4 • 116 Ratings

🗓️ 27 July 2024

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week on the GeekWire Podcast, our guest is entrepreneur and investor Ben Gilbert, co-founder and co-host of the hit podcast Acquired.

Ben and his colleague David Rosenthal have developed a huge following for their deep-dive, long-form podcasts telling the stories behind some of the most successful companies in the world, and they recently released Microsoft Volume II, the second installment in their epic exploration of the Redmond-based technology giant.

We talk about Microsoft's misunderstood era, with help from some archival highlights from GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop's interviews with Bill Gates over the years. It’s a timely topic given Microsoft’s 50th anniversary in 2025 and the company's resurgence as one of the most valuable and relevant companies in the tech industry with the rise of AI.

Before we jump in, we ask Ben to catch us up on all things Acquired. The podcast is the talk of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, as documented in a Wall Street Journal profile. Acquired just announced a live arena show coming up on Sept. 10 featuring Mark Zuckerberg at Chase Center in San Francisco, the home of the Golden State Warriors.

Edited and produced by Curt Milton.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:14.7	Ben I have to say and I apologize for going down the journalistic history lane here but one of my favorite moments was from the Windows Vista era I got an email from somebody who was upgraded on his computer from I believe Windows XP to Windows Vista I think against his will or something he had gone from
0:19.3	XP to Vista and he was not happy about it and he was unable to get his printer to work with Windows Vista so I went out and I visited with him.
0:27.0	I connected him with a Microsoft engineer who went out and fixed it like from Redmond and I wrote about it and my headline was, man gets Windows Vista to work with
0:38.9	printer.
0:40.9	I didn't know you wrote for the onion.
0:44.3	Welcome to GeekWire.
0:48.3	Welcome to GeekWire. I'm GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. We are coming to you from
0:55.5	Seattle where we get to report each day on what's happening around us in
0:58.4	business, technology, and innovation. What happens here matters everywhere
1:02.1	and every week on this show? We talk about
1:04.3	some of the most interesting stories and trends in the news. This week I'm very
1:08.4	excited to welcome a special guest Ben Gilbert the co-founder and co-host of the hit podcast, acquired. Ben, it's great to see you.
1:17.0	You too, Todd. This feels like a homecoming of sorts.
1:20.0	You've been doing acquired for a while. I've been following it almost since the beginning. I've been on an episode and for folks who are not familiar with acquired, Ben and his colleague David Rosenthal have developed a huge following for their deep dive long-form
1:33.3	podcasts that tell the stories behind some of the most successful
1:36.4	companies in the world and they recently released Microsoft
1:41.0	volume two the second installment in their epic exploration of the Redmond-based technology giant.
1:48.0	Ben, I'm really looking forward to talking about Microsoft for reasons that will become clear to the uninitiated as we go.
1:56.0	And I know that you've had a lot of fun now doing your second deep dive into the company.
2:00.8	Yeah, it's funny. To me, Microsoft has these three distinct chapters.
2:05.2	There's the early days, which is ancient history, that people know a few stories from, but, you know,
2:10.7	really is almost 50 years old.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -242 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from GeekWire, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of GeekWire and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.