In high school, I started my first company, called M Cubed Software. We named it that because it was me and two other guys named Mike.
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I was fortunate that I came out to the Valley in 1979, when I came out to go to Stanford Business School, and my very first assignment as a teaching assistant for an investments professor was to - he told me go down to this computer company in Cupertino called Apple.
My parents had a software company making children's software for the Apple II+, Commodore 64 and Acorn computers. They hired these teenagers to program the software, and these guys were true hackers, trying to get more colors and sound and animation out of those computers.
When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software. We had dreams about the impact it could have.
Mike Krieger and I started talking, and he decided he liked the idea of helping start the company. Once he joined, we took a step back and looked at the product as it stood.
Paul Allen with Microsoft revolutionized the software industry.
When we launched the first version of Basecamp in 2004, we decided to build software for small companies just like us.
I know one business, and that's how to make software.
In the space of three weeks, I met a fair bunch of the guys who were just starting those little programmers' co-ops, and everybody was talking about starting businesses.
In 1991, I co-founded my first start-up, Ink Development, which made software for an early tablet computer.
When I was 24, I co-founded a company called Athenahealth which built the first Web-based software and back-office service suite for doctors' offices.