Starting a restaurant easily can cost $25K in those days. Yet people did it all the time. Don't overlook that Microsoft was IBM's second choice. Their first wa

Starting a restaurant easily can cost $25K in those days. Yet people did it all the time. Don't overlook that Microsoft was IBM's second choice. Their first was Digital Research. And lastly, I haven't been able to find any evidence that Gates Sr. funded Microsoft with at $25,000 check. Citation needed! Certainly there's no mention in the book "Hard Drive", and my recollection is that he started MS with $5,000. There's nothing Bill Gates did at the time that a very, very large number of people could have done, if they'd only thought of it and had been willing to risk it. I knew many computer people at the time, and they dismissed PCs as toys and saw no future in them. Including many who had money to invest in such a startup.