Pirates: A Silicon Valley Story

Dear Esther...

Dear Esther,

I found some time to reflect on that casual conversation where I didn't quite agree with what you said about giving credit to our crazy thoughts.

For the benefit of those bound outside of Whatsapp's end-to-end encryption feature, I'll paste a part of the conversation. (Meta, I know you've read everything already)

“We humans sure think crazy things”

“Is it that crazy?”

“It is, afterall without our crazy thoughts we wouldn't have evolved this far." 

“You're saying that we should credit our crazy thoughts for bringing us this far?”

Few hours ago, I remembered the story of Bill Gates that I discovered when I watched Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999).

IBM needed a 16-bit operating system to run on their personal computers back then and Bill Gate pitched an OS called Quick and Dirty Operating System (QDOS) - an operating system that would later go on to become the legendary MS - DOS.

IBM accepted the pitch from Bill Gates company but there was one problem - Microsoft didn't have an Operating System… at least, not one they could sell.

Microsoft went to Seattle Computer System and bought the QDOS for a measly $50 000 since Seattle Computer Systems didn't know the worth of their invention.

That got me thinking… how crazy can one be to go into a room with the then biggest computer company in the world and pitch a product that they don't have? A huge gamble.

If that move failed, Microsoft probably wouldn't have succeeded so much because the funding they got from IBM for that Operating System shot them up the ranks.

“Afterall, without our crazy thoughts we wouldn’t have evolved this far.”

P.S: You didn't win this round