Understanding the behemoth in Redmond teaches us valuable lessons in cloud infrastructure, startup strategy, and the future of software.
https://luttig.substack.com/p/dont-forget-microsoft
* owned 70%
* hundreds of products
* described
* PC growth wave
* most valuable company in the world
* inflected
* “Windows in the Cloud”
* became generally available in 2010
* several
* lumping it into “other” revenue buckets
* ~$20B in shares per quarter
* below age 35
* Halloween documents from 1998
* in 2015
* long tail of IDEs
* Replit
* commoditizes its complement
* lofty mission
* AI-fueled vision
* Bessemer Cloud Index
* aggressive M&A track record
* Compound Startup thesis
* outpaced
* more revenue