“In the software world it’s very particular for platforms… These are winner-takes-all markets. So the greatest mistake ever is whatever mismanagement I engaged in that caused Microsoft not to be what Android is. That is, Android is the standard phone platform – non-Apple platform. That was a natural thing for Microsoft to win,” [Bill Gates at Village Capital’s event]
From Company G to M
“It really is winner takes all, If you’re there with half as many apps or 90 percent as many apps, you’re on your way to complete doom. There’s room for exactly one non-Apple operating system. And what’s that worth? $400bn that would be transferred from company G to company M”.
On screwing up..
“There is this idea that just small differences can magnify themselves. That doesn’t exist for a lot of businesses. You know, if you’re a service business, it doesn’t exist. But for software platforms, it’s absolutely gigantic. And so that’s partly why you have the mentality that every night you think, ‘Am I screwing this up?’. And eventually we did screw a super-important one.”
