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Tren Griffin

@trengriffin

4 Apr

Microsoft was formed 46 years ago today only in terms of the formality.

The magazine Gates and Allen saw in Harvard Square was the January 1975 edition.

BASIC for the Altair PC was sent to MITS in February of 1975

Altair BASIC was released three days from today in 1975.

2/ People get confused about Microsoft history since the unauthorized books on Microsoft are often fictional. Writers make up stories like "BASIC was sold to MITS."

PA: "When our 1975 royalty statement arrived, we were sorely disappointed. Our royalties totaled a mere $16,005."

3/ PA: "By Bill’s calculation, fewer than one in ten Altair buyers were purchasing BASIC. It was hard to fathom, because the machine was next to worthless without it. With the base Altair kit costing ~$400, MITS barely broke even on the machines." Profit was in the peripherals.

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Tren Griffin

@trengriffin

3 Apr

1/ Charlie Munger: "I have a simple rule for success in fishing. Fish where the fish are. If the fishing is really lousy where you are you should probably look for another place to fish."

When I see people use modern data science tools, I think about this point made by Charlie.

2/ In business the tools to manage unit economics are vastly better today. Far less guessing is going on.

When I was younger is wasn't hard to catch salmon because they were plentiful. Fewer people had fish good finders. My current Garmin gear is split screen (low/high CHIRP).

3/ New tools make discovering product/market fit easier, but more people are using these same tools. One big difference between SaaS discovery and salmon fishing is you can capture customers more efficiently from legacy providers who don't use these tools or are slow to change.

Read 9 tweets

Tren Griffin

@trengriffin

1 Apr

1/ In 1995 a team of twenty people I was on successfully convinced delegates to create the first 28 GHz spectrum allocation for NGSO (eg LEO) satellite constellations. The scale and nature our lobbying effort at a World Radio Conference was unprecedented. wired.com/1997/10/telede…

2/ The technology has advanced to a point where multiple constellations are fighting each other for various regulatory permissions at the ITU and with national regulators. One estimate: ~10,100 small satellites may be launched into LEO over the next decade.ft.com/content/e3de56…

3/ ">90 companies or agencies plan constellations, most in LEO. Starlink, Amazon’s Project Kuiper with 3,200 satellites, Britain’s OneWeb with about 700 and Telesat of Canada with 298. The EU, too, is talking about its own constellation while China is planning multiple systems."

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Tren Griffin

@trengriffin

26 Mar

What's this just seen in the night sky above Seattle?

Clue:

Another clue?

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Tren Griffin

@trengriffin

26 Mar

"SpaceX had 25 orbital launches in 2020. All but five of these missions utilized flight proven boosters, and 14 payload fairing halves were re-flown. SpaceX aims to almost double that launch cadence in 2021."

How many of the 25 were Starlink launches?
nasaspaceflight.com/2021/03/spacex…

"More than half of the 2020 missions — 14 of them, to be precise — launched in support of SpaceX's Starlink satellite-internet project." google.com/amp/s/www.spac…

"Musk eventually plans to build 1,000 Starship rockets and launch three of them a day to send 1 million people to Mars. The 387-foot-long Starship rocket is meant to be fully and rapidly reusable." google.com/amp/s/www.busi…

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Tren Griffin

@trengriffin

20 Mar

1/ In early 2000 Paul Allen asked Craig McCaw if he wanted to assume control of Metricom's wireless Ricochet service. Paul wanted to make the service a success and was willing to pay Craig to assume control (the price would be negative). Craig and I met with Paul in his office.

2/ Paul Allen's office was straight up out of a James Bond Movie. For example, a glass exterior wall with shades that dropped down to darken the room when a button on his desk was pushed.

We reviewed the pitch deck, talked about it and were given the financials and other data.

3/ Even with a negative purchase price we concluded the business couldn't be saved. A combination of physics and nonstandard hardware/software created unsolvable problems. The service worked technically in certain locations but it would never scale to create shareholder value.

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