Microsoft
Licensed the OS, owned the stack, and survived every hardware wave it missed by owning the software where enterprise work actually happens.
Latest filing on file · 2026-06-30
Overview
Business model and origins
Every computer in the world will run Microsoft software — a bold claim in 1975 when computers filled rooms, but Gates bet on the hobbyist PC market before it existed and structured every deal to own the software, never the hardware.
Origin
In 1975 Bill Gates and Paul Allen read a Popular Electronics cover story about the Altair 8800 microcomputer and cold-called the manufacturer. They sold an interpreter they hadn't yet written. The company was founded in Albuquerque to be near the Altair maker, MITS; within a year they were licensing BASIC to other manufacturers. The defining move came in 1980: IBM hired Microsoft to provide the operating system for its new personal computer. Gates didn't have one, so he bought QDOS from Seattle Computer Products for $50,000, renamed it MS-DOS, and crucially — kept the right to license it to other manufacturers. IBM built the PC; Microsoft built the ecosystem around it. By the time IBM clones flooded the market, every machine ran MS-DOS. That one licensing decision was the original flywheel.