Re:Why We Said “No” to a $40M Round
by CurtMonash on Wednesday August 09, 2017 @07:36PM
(#14974797)
Actually, Microsoft was pretty much self-funded. (Except perhaps for some help from the Bank of Dad.) They eventually took a bit of VC mainly to get the outside advice.
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Re:Why We Said “No” to a $40M Round
by adventured on Wednesday August 09, 2017 @10:47PM
(#14975900)
> Except perhaps for some help from the Bank of Dad.
Based on what both Gates and Allen have said, it was completely self-funded to get started. The Gates family contributed no money. Microsoft was founded with a few thousand dollars and they were profitable / break-even almost immediately. Gates and Allen had just made a nice chunk of money doing contract work on a large scale power system before pursuing the Altair opportunity.
it's nice to get free food and lodgings while building a company
Bill Gates talks about that. They eventually receive 5 million but didn't use the money.