Q: You dropped out of Harvard in your junior year to start Microsoft with your friend Paul Allen. What was your original business plan?

Bill Gates:

Microsoft was the first software company where we wrote softwarefor personal computers. And we believed that we could hire the best engineers, there was an unbelievable amount of software to be written, and we could do it well and we could do it on a global basis.

And the original customer base was the hardware manufacturers. We sold to literally hundreds and hundreds, you know, over 100 companies in Japan, over 100 companies doing word processors and industrial control type things.

We knew, in the long run, we wanted to sell software directly to users, but we actually didn't get around to that until 1980, when we had our first sort of games and productivity software that people would go to a computer store and actually buy the software package.

Q: You dropped out of Harvard in your junior year to start Microsoft with your friend Paul Allen. What was your original business plan?

Bill Gates:

Microsoft was the first software company where we wrote softwarefor personal computers. And we believed that we could hire the best engineers, there was an unbelievable amount of software to be written, and we could do it well and we could do it on a global basis.

And the original customer base was the hardware manufacturers. We sold to literally hundreds and hundreds, you know, over 100 companies in Japan, over 100 companies doing word processors and industrial control type things.

We knew, in the long run, we wanted to sell software directly to users, but we actually didn't get around to that until 1980,when we had our first sort of games and productivity software that people would go to a computer store and actually buy the software package.