Microsoft is celebrating its 50th anniversary this month, and co-founder Bill Gates sat down with current CEO Satya Nadella. Among all the conversations, he opened up about one critical misstep during the company’s early days when Gates himself was the CEO, and that was underestimating the importance of government relations.
“You know, I might tell my younger self, watch out for the government,” Gates said during a recent podcast featuring all three CEOs who have led Microsoft throughout its half-century history. “I was pretty naive about not engaging in Washington, DC, as soon as I should have.”
This political naivety ultimately led to a massive antitrust case against Microsoft in the 1990s, when the US Department of Justice alleged the tech giant was becoming a monopoly. The legal battle resulted in a 2000 ruling that Microsoft had violated antitrust laws, with an initial order to split the company in two—though an appeals court later overturned this decision.
Another mistake Bill Gates made as CEO of MIcrosoft
Gates’ Washington mistake wasn’t his only regret. He also acknowledged misconceptions about team building during Microsoft’s formative years.
“I certainly at first thought that engineering skill meant you would be good at other things. That turned out to be wrong,” Gates admitted. “We had to really build teams in a more mixed, diverse set of skills than I expected.”
The billionaire philanthropist has previously shared advice he would give his younger self, noting in a 2017 Reddit “Ask Me Anything” session that “smartness is not single-dimensional and not quite as important as I thought it was back then.”
Despite these early missteps, Microsoft has grown into one of the world’s most valuable companies under the leadership of Gates, Steve Ballmer, and current CEO Satya Nadella. Now a tech behemoth that revolutionized personal computing, Microsoft’s journey from startup to industry titan stands as a testament to its ability to learn from mistakes—including Gates’ early political oversight.
