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Ahh, I came to this thread far too late, but hopefully this won't be missed. In 1980 The Yankee Group (a tech consultancy) reached out to my dad to help them un

Ahh, I came to this thread far too late, but hopefully this won't be missed. In 1980 The Yankee Group (a tech consultancy) reached out to my dad to help them understand how Sears could respond to the growing tech phenomenon. For reasons too long to get into, Gates and my pops (a Canadian) knew each other and were even both covered in The Intelligent Machines Journal out of Palo Alto in the same issue during the waning days of the '70s. So my father and these Yankees told Gates that Microsoft should meet with these clueless Sears guys, since they'd probably move a number of computers over the next couple years and it would be helpful for them to think "Computers? Microsoft." So he begrudgingly did. In the meeting someone brought up investment and Gates said they could have 20% for $8m. You never know how all these things go. Sometimes someone you never heard of tells you something true and your relative position stops you from seeing it.

ThrowMeDown01 8y ago
Yes, with hindsight a lot of things look ridiculous. Now go and tell such a story about a person offering an investment into their business of whom we don't know the future outcome yet...
dba7dba 8y ago
Haha, that's interesting to hear. So if Sears invested in Microsoft in 1980, Sears of today could've been like Yahoo, whose investment in Alibaba kept Yahoo afloat a few more years but ultimately continued down the downward spiral? I gather that the few people at Sears who were aware of the investment invite from Bill Gates may not even be alive, considering it was 39 years ago.
- Bonooru 8y ago
  Yahoo was different though. People would buy Yahoo stock as a proxy for Alibaba since it wasn't publicly traded.
- ngcc_hk 8y ago
  May be it so negatively influence Microsoft it killed it. It is not a money deposit. You can run down your firm which core to your business you can run down other non-core business. Not many run mixed business work (GM in one stage but not even now).
confiscate 8y ago
60 minutes interview with a young Jeff Bezos, 1999 https://youtu.be/VuI-ss5aQU8?t=629 https://youtu.be/VuI-ss5aQU8?t=629 "how do you view that phenomenon [laugh] that Amazon is worth more than Sears!? [condescending laugh]" "a couple of geeks [laugh laugh], who sketched out some software, could destroy Sears Roebuck [laugh]" same 60 minutes "expert", telling young Bezos, Amazon stock was wildly expensive https://youtu.be/dTxuzW9RAO8?t=20 https://youtu.be/dTxuzW9RAO8?t=20 "Amazon is worth more than a major industrial company, like Texaco ... that didn't blow your mind?"
- samatman 8y ago
  In 1999, AMZN peaked ar $80. Two years later it was trading at $10, and didn’t recover until 2007. The interviewer was right; Amazon was over valued.
  - lostlogin 8y ago
    Or was it radically undervalued in 2001?
    - samstave 8y ago
      I'd say it wasn't, because AWS didn't exist to be undervalued as a business factor.
    - amanaplanacanal 8y ago
      What kind of profits were they showing in 2001? I'm not going to look it up, but I'm sure they were negative. There were a lot of people back then who couldn't figure out how Amazon would ever make money when they sold everything at a loss.
  - confiscate 8y ago
    Amazon worth more than Sears? Can you imagine?
    - close04 8y ago
samstave 8y ago
My grandmother received an invite. We are a seattle-native family. Through people we knew at the time, they asked her to invest in their company and she could have 10% of the company if she gave them money. She discussed it with my grandfather and they both agreed: "Nobody is going to drink that much coffee." and rejected Starbuck's offer.
- nielsole 8y ago
  There was a good podcast about the founding period on NPRs how i built this. Worth checking out
konschubert 8y ago
Wait, I’m confused. This agency that’s consulting for sears sets up a meeting for bill gates to sell his computers to sears? How is that in the interest of sears?
- 3pt14159 8y ago
  Because in the early 80s nobody understood computers or how individuals at home were going to use them and Sears knew they didn't know. For example, some people thought that computers should be waterproof so you could install them next to your sink in the kitchen so you could use them to help you with recipes. Sound crazy? What's an iPhone? A waterproof computer that helps hundreds of millions with recipes. There were so many good ideas in the early 80s but Gates was such a genius that he understood how to separate which ones were coming first. He thought about things from first principles in a way that Musk does today. The Yankees knew databases and stuff, but they didn't know the future, but they knew that my dad thought in the same way. That he thought about the future. My dad was more of a telephony guy than a computer guy and he saw how much of a genius Gates was, so he roped him in to help out his Yankee friends.
  - Izkata 8y ago
    > so you could install them next to your sink in the kitchen so you could use them to help you with recipes. Yikes, you just reminded me of a TV ad I saw in the late 90s, of a housewife using a device like that. I remember a CRT-style monitor, but it's faded enough that I can't remember any other details.
    - kd5bjo 8y ago
      In 1969, there was the Honeywell Kitchen Computer: https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/minicomputers/11/362 https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/minicomputers/11/...

ThrowMeDown01 8y ago

Yes, with hindsight a lot of things look ridiculous. Now go and tell such a story about a person offering an investment into their business of whom we don't know the future outcome yet...

dba7dba 8y ago

Haha, that's interesting to hear. So if Sears invested in Microsoft in 1980, Sears of today could've been like Yahoo, whose investment in Alibaba kept Yahoo afloat a few more years but ultimately continued down the downward spiral? I gather that the few people at Sears who were aware of the investment invite from Bill Gates may not even be alive, considering it was 39 years ago.

Bonooru 8y ago
Yahoo was different though. People would buy Yahoo stock as a proxy for Alibaba since it wasn't publicly traded.
ngcc_hk 8y ago
May be it so negatively influence Microsoft it killed it. It is not a money deposit. You can run down your firm which core to your business you can run down other non-core business. Not many run mixed business work (GM in one stage but not even now).

confiscate 8y ago

60 minutes interview with a young Jeff Bezos, 1999 https://youtu.be/VuI-ss5aQU8?t=629 https://youtu.be/VuI-ss5aQU8?t=629 "how do you view that phenomenon [laugh] that Amazon is worth more than Sears!? [condescending laugh]" "a couple of geeks [laugh laugh], who sketched out some software, could destroy Sears Roebuck [laugh]" same 60 minutes "expert", telling young Bezos, Amazon stock was wildly expensive https://youtu.be/dTxuzW9RAO8?t=20 https://youtu.be/dTxuzW9RAO8?t=20 "Amazon is worth more than a major industrial company, like Texaco ... that didn't blow your mind?"

samatman 8y ago
In 1999, AMZN peaked ar $80. Two years later it was trading at $10, and didn’t recover until 2007. The interviewer was right; Amazon was over valued.
- lostlogin 8y ago
  Or was it radically undervalued in 2001?
  - samstave 8y ago
    I'd say it wasn't, because AWS didn't exist to be undervalued as a business factor.
  - amanaplanacanal 8y ago
    What kind of profits were they showing in 2001? I'm not going to look it up, but I'm sure they were negative. There were a lot of people back then who couldn't figure out how Amazon would ever make money when they sold everything at a loss.
- confiscate 8y ago
  Amazon worth more than Sears? Can you imagine?
  - close04 8y ago

samstave 8y ago

My grandmother received an invite. We are a seattle-native family. Through people we knew at the time, they asked her to invest in their company and she could have 10% of the company if she gave them money. She discussed it with my grandfather and they both agreed: "Nobody is going to drink that much coffee." and rejected Starbuck's offer.

nielsole 8y ago
There was a good podcast about the founding period on NPRs how i built this. Worth checking out

konschubert 8y ago

Wait, I’m confused. This agency that’s consulting for sears sets up a meeting for bill gates to sell his computers to sears? How is that in the interest of sears?

3pt14159 8y ago
Because in the early 80s nobody understood computers or how individuals at home were going to use them and Sears knew they didn't know. For example, some people thought that computers should be waterproof so you could install them next to your sink in the kitchen so you could use them to help you with recipes. Sound crazy? What's an iPhone? A waterproof computer that helps hundreds of millions with recipes. There were so many good ideas in the early 80s but Gates was such a genius that he understood how to separate which ones were coming first. He thought about things from first principles in a way that Musk does today. The Yankees knew databases and stuff, but they didn't know the future, but they knew that my dad thought in the same way. That he thought about the future. My dad was more of a telephony guy than a computer guy and he saw how much of a genius Gates was, so he roped him in to help out his Yankee friends.
- Izkata 8y ago
  > so you could install them next to your sink in the kitchen so you could use them to help you with recipes. Yikes, you just reminded me of a TV ad I saw in the late 90s, of a housewife using a device like that. I remember a CRT-style monitor, but it's faded enough that I can't remember any other details.
  - kd5bjo 8y ago
    In 1969, there was the Honeywell Kitchen Computer: https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/minicomputers/11/362 https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/minicomputers/11/...