“A new competitor ‘born’ on the Internet is Netscape. Their browser is dominant, with 70% usage share, allowing them to determine which network extensions will catch on. They are pursuing a multi-platform strategy where they move the key API into the client to commoditize the underlying operating system.”
Bill Gates
The Internet Tidal Wave (Primary source)
The Internet Tidal Wave memo, sent to Microsoft’s executive staff and direct reports on May 26, 1995, is one of the most consequential internal documents in the company’s history—less a visionary essay than a detailed competitive war plan written under a sense of strategic urgency.
More about “The Internet Tidal Wave” →
“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.”
— Bill Gates Primary source“Few skills are more important than knowing how to distinguish what’s true from what’s false.”
— Bill Gates Primary source“People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in ten.”
— Bill Gates Primary source“The axiom that you learn more from your failures than your successes is trite but absolutely true.”
— Bill Gates Primary source“Let every new year find you a better man.”
— Benjamin Franklin Primary source“‘Tomorrow!’ What possibilities there are in that word.”
— Helen Keller Primary source“I want every product plan to try and go overboard on Internet features.”
— Bill Gates Primary source“If you fail at the large things it means you have not large ambitions. Concentration, focus—that is ah. The aptitudes come, the tools forge themselves. ‘Give me a fulcrum and I will move the world’—but only if the desire to move the world is there.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source