Microsoft had a record quarter… congrats. I know it’s not cool to actually applaud Microsoft. People think it is somehow cool and easy to pick on this company. BUT from my perspective we should all be thankful to Microsoft and hope that they continue to be hugely successful.
Why?
Well, the quick answer is easy… MSFT and its ecosystem employ lots (I mean a ton) of people. And all those folks out there who use Windows are our potential customers. That alone should be good enough.
But let me peal back a layer…
I was a grad student in the CS Dept. at CU Boulder way back when. Microsoft was despised; the mere mention of the name could get you expelled or at least result in a spitball in the eye. I went along with that philosophy…
Then a funny thing happened, I graduated and needed a job. I saw an article in the Daily Camera for a startup in Boulder that was building cool and cutting edge software for the Emergency Medical Industry. I walked into the office, met the CTO and started working the next day as an intern which led to a full time gig…. that company was a Microsoft shop and was helping to save lives. Geez, Microsoft can’t be that bad. Then the company sold and had a nice exit; ok, you can be a successful entrepreneur building on the MSFT stack. That’s good!
By the way, that company was called PinPoint Technologies and that CTO, David Cohen, went on to found Tech Stars one of the best things to happen to the Colorado technology scene. In a way Microsoft was one of the things that made this possible.
Fast forward a few years and I built a RSS reader for mobile phones (one of the supported OS’s was Windows Mobile). This got acquired by Newsgator Technologies and I worked there for a few years. Newsgator is a .NET shop (yes, Microsoft enters the picture again). Newsgator is the raddest mature technology company in Colorado hands down and some of the brightest developers I have met happen to be the .NET developers that work at Newsgator. Microsoft ain’t so bad!!!
The startup I am involved with now does not use any of the Microsoft stack - that is for other reasons and for another post.
But man, please for all our sakes Microsoft, please keep kicking ass. Why is it cool to rip on Microsoft? I am not sure but the next time you think about it, please don’t. It’s not cool to try to be cool.
