Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft

I saw Steve for the first time at the MVP Summit last month. That's when I got my first taste of the most outwardly passionate and boisterous CEO I've ever seen. This time he was no different. I sat just two rows back from the front and warned Ilana and Yoav that we might be too close ;-) Steve gave an entertaining and inspiring talk. Listening to him is a nice change of pace from the typical straight-laced CEO that says everything by the book. Steve seems like the kind of guy that would toss, no throw, the book out the window.

Steve Ballmer's bio

Notes:

Joined MS in 1980 when MS was already 5 yrs old

Talked about how Microsoft got started

Business had grown a lot in the 5 yrs before he started - they already had 30 employees

They moved from Albuquerque to Seattle for all the reasons you might expect: because the founders wanted to live there

Stayed at Harvard and graduated so he is the poster child for staying in school

Went to P&G (wonderful experience)

Lots of interesting people were there at the same time: Scott Cook (Intuit), Meg Whitman (eBay), Jeff Immelt (GE)

Went to business school at Stanford for 1 yr and dropped out

He wasn't sure why he joined MS other than Bill was the smartest guy he knew. He always thought he'd work at a big company

After a month at MS, he thought he made a mistake (he didn't want to be an accountant for a 30 person company)

Went to dinner with Bill and Bill's dad. Bill convinced him of the vision: a computer in every home

All great software companies are born with a technical and business vision

Cisco, Google, etc had a strong business vision to go along with a strong technical vision - he thinks both are required to be successful

25 years later, he has the same passion and optimism

MS has about 61,000 employees now - people think he should always know the exact number of employees but it is hard with so many folks coming and going.

He thinks next 10 yrs will have as much impact as the last 10

10 yrs ago we didn't have PCs, cell phones, Internet, etc.

In 10 yrs, we'll have ubiquitous wireless networking, storage will be essentially free

In 10 yrs, we'll be able to capture everything

Moore's Law is still alive and well

Hardware is in good shape, but Intel is having a hard time keeping chips cool

Software will be where the action is

All lectures will be recorded, notes will be captured

50% of people that do a search today don't get a useful result

Next 12 months are very exciting because of all the new product role outs

Bill and Steve are probably the only CEOs that have run a company of 30 people and 60,000 people

Considers himself a "glass is half full" kinda guy

Send him an email if you are interested in working at MS

Q/A
How did you lose control of the Windows group? (question from Cusumano)

Doesn't think he lost control

Software de-evolution doesn't happen

People don't want a bunch of small components – they want it combined

From XP to Vista took 5 yrs

Primary customer of Windows is developers, not really users

Learned how to handle innovations and co-dependence

What can you control in MS as CEO?

Four big things and the rest he has to delegate. When MS was smaller, he was all over every detail
1) Culture - non-delegable, CEO has to do it
2) People - getting people right is important
3) Overall vision of what will be important and make sure company invests in tomorrow, not just today
4) External image starts with leadership

How big of a threat is open source?

Open source isn't going anywhere so MS has to fight it head on

Writing a custom version of Windows to compete with Linux in high-end scientific computing market

Software as a service (adverts, subscription) is a big deal for them

How will you compete with Google?

He'd turn it around and ask how will Google compete with them?

Can say Bravo to Google for building a strong advertising business

Wouldn't be an easy conversation for him, but 50% of people don't find useful results from search

MS has #1 blogging site (MSN Spaces) and #1 email (Hotmail)

Healthcare is least automated even though it is one of the largest segments

Why hasn't the market realized Microsoft's value?

MS has a big stock buyback so they think the stock is a good value right now

How do you keep abreast of new market advances?

Internet helps a lot

More than any other company, people approach MS about new advances

What job would you do if you changed careers?

If he was more athletic and 30 yrs younger, he'd choose basketball or the pro tour (golf)

He's going to be at MS another 10 yrs or so

After that he might teach at business school