It was November 1980. Ronald Reagan had just defeated Jimmy Carter in the U.S. presidential

election, and Bill Gates, barely 25 years old, had already been running Microsoft for more

than five years with his childhood friend Paul Allen when he showed up at Husky Stadium at

the University of Washington in Seattle, not entirely prepared for the fall

weather.

All I can remember was it was a pretty brisk day, and he showed up in like a t-shirt or

something.

So I had a sport coat on, and I think I gave him my sport coat just to keep him warm.

That's David Marquart, speaking in a recent interview with Geekwire.

A former mechanical engineer with a deep interest in the nascent personal computer market,

Marquart was early in his career as a Silicon Valley investor at the time.

I had never met Bill, but I had seen him present at the Homebrew Computer Club back when I was an engineer.

And he makes a strong impression when you hear him for the first time.

Mark Whart had already met with Steve Ballmer, who had joined Microsoft earlier that year.

And as a follow-up, the future Microsoft CEO had arranged for Mark Whart to meet up with the Microsoft co-founder in the Gates family's box at the Husky football game.

So we really didn't watch much of the game. He spent a lot of time on the back of the program outlining his compiler architecture and what he was doing with the company. It was a very

technical first meeting. Not a lot of small talk. Microsoft had not taken any outside investment

to that point, and it really didn't need to. It had annual profits of $2 million to $3 million

on about $5 million in revenue. But the following year, after overcoming some skepticism from his partners,

Marquart led his firm's investment in the fledgling software company.

He remembers the terms exactly.

Yeah, we invested a million dollars for 5% of the company.

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