The birth of a billionaire -- 25 years of MSFT

I graduated from college in '87. I had worked through school and had actually put away $12000 in an account with Fidelity. I had a job offer so I was thinking I should invest the money and not look at it again for 20 years or so. I knew about Microsoft from school, and did as much research as you could back then on them. They had all ready split the stock once by the time I was looking at it. I was all set to put the money into Microsoft, ignoring the idea of portfolio which had been drilled into me in finance classes. My car, a VW Golf GTI starting stalling out and the dealer couldn't figure it out, so instead of getting into MSFT I bought a new car so I wouldn't have issues with the new job. F#&^ing Hell!!!!!!
Maybe I would have cashed out to buy a stupid big house or something along the way, but ouch that one sticks in my head. At least at it's peak, if I had held, it would have been worth over a million in less than 20 years.
Cripes that would have been a simple million.
 
Quote from r-in:

I graduated from college in '87. I had worked through school and had actually put away $12000 in an account with Fidelity. I had a job offer so I was thinking I should invest the money and not look at it again for 20 years or so. I knew about Microsoft from school, and did as much research as you could back then on them. They had all ready split the stock once by the time I was looking at it. I was all set to put the money into Microsoft, ignoring the idea of portfolio which had been drilled into me in finance classes. My car, a VW Golf GTI starting stalling out and the dealer couldn't figure it out, so instead of getting into MSFT I bought a new car so I wouldn't have issues with the new job. F#&^ing Hell!!!!!!
Maybe I would have cashed out to buy a stupid big house or something along the way, but ouch that one sticks in my head. At least at it's peak, if I had held, it would have been worth over a million in less than 20 years.
Cripes that would have been a simple million.
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and now you dont have that car nor the same job...right? :D

there is a huge chance you would not have held it this long and taken profits when it hit its first 1000% gain
 
I know and I mentioned that. It still is a kick in the ass, in the realm of what ifs.:) Actually the Toyota Celica I bought to replace the VW had the same problem at around the same mileage. I found out the VW was subject to a recall which you had to make a stink about to get affirmed at the time, and the Toyota ended up being the same thing. People wonder why we end up with more frickin government. It's because of crap like this, where I company should resolve a problem, but hides instead. We all end up suffering with more gov. agencies and lawyers and gov. employees live the high life.
 
When I was a younger teenager I used to subscribe to all the car magazines.

I remember in one of the "special exotics" issues, they had a full test of the Porsche 959. As part of the story, they mentioned the car was owned by the young software entrepreneur Bill Gates, who had one of the first 959's in the united states. I remember them discussing the IPO or his wealth and at the time It just boggled my mind.

Apparently he was having trouble getting the car registered for street use, so they could only drive it on the track. I wonder if it was ever cleared?
 
Quote from 1prometheus:

When I was a younger teenager I used to subscribe to all the car magazines.

I remember in one of the "special exotics" issues, they had a full test of the Porsche 959. As part of the story, they mentioned the car was owned by the young software entrepreneur Bill Gates, who had one of the first 959's in the united states. I remember them discussing the IPO or his wealth and at the time It just boggled my mind.

Apparently he was having trouble getting the car registered for street use, so they could only drive it on the track. I wonder if it was ever cleared?
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Don Johnson ( Sonny Crocket ) ...had the first 959 in the US. I think
 
"Gates 959"The "Gates 959" is an infamous car[7], one of the Porsche 959s built in the mid-eighties, imported by Bill Gates to the United States in 1987. Gates' fellow Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen imported another one, as did Porsche collector Jerry Seinfeld. These cars had not been approved by regulators and had no Department of Transportationý and Environmental Protection Agencyý approval. The "Gates 959" was stored for 13 years by the Customs Service at the Port of Seattle, until regulations were changed to allow "Autos of Interest" to be imported with severe limitations on their use[7]. Gates and Allen both helped pass the "Show and Display" law[7][8]."
 
Quote from Pekelo:

On the 25th anniversary of Microsoft's IPO, Fortune is featuring our 1986 cover story in which we followed around a young Bill Gates as he prepared to take his company public. Here's the story of the birth of a billionaire.

http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2011/03/13/inside-the-deal-that-made-bill-gates-350000000/
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What a story. Back then there were plenty of people that knew how to write good software I'm sure, but thats only a small part of the equation. Selling it is a whole other ball game. Thats the hard part.
 
"At 3:30 the two sides were stalemated, Goldman Sachs now at $1.33 and Microsoft at $1.30. They were arguing over all of $93,000 in a total fee of more than $4 million, and pressure was building."

Priceless....

"At 9:35 Microsoft's stock traded publicly on the over-the-counter market for the first time at $25.75. Within minutes Goldman Sachs and Alex. Brown exercised their option to take an extra 300,000 shares between them. Gaudette could hardly believe the tumult. Calling Shirley from the floor, he shouted into the phone, ''It's wild! I've never seen anything like it -- every last person here is trading Microsoft and nothing else.''

"The strength of retail demand caught everyone by surprise. By the end of the first day of trading, some 2.5 million shares had changed hands, and the price of Microsoft's stock stood at $27.75."

Some additional info about MS business practices:

http://richwritings.com/opinion5.htm

"Some thought Microsoft’s public offering was perfectly timed – Microsoft was “riding the bubble” of Windows before the public really had a chance to use it.

Windows 1.0 was a terrible product (slow, buggy, and awkward) that floundered on the market until January 1987. Fortunately for Microsoft, Aldus’ PageMaker 1.0 was released as the first WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) desktop-publishing program for the PC. It was, as they say, a “game changer”. People began to see the potential for Macintosh-like features on their cheaper PCs. Later in 1987, Microsoft released “Excel”, their Windows-compatible spreadsheet (an idea some thought was stolen from the Lotus 1-2-3 product). And then, in December of 1987, Microsoft released Windows 2.0 that looked much more like the Macintosh software. It had icons to represent programs and files and better hardware support. Apple filed a lawsuit against Microsoft in 1988 alleging that Microsoft had broken the 1985 agreement."
 
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