The Microsoft partnership was incorporated on June 25, 1981 with Bill Gates and Paul Allen getting the majority of the founding shares. However, certain other key employees in 1981 were also issued Microsoft shares. Below is a list of early investors in Microsoft.
Steve Ballmer:
Ballmer received 8% of the Microsoft founding stock. Ballmer was hired by Bill Gates in 1980 as the software firm’s first business manager. He has headed various Microsoft divisions such as operations, operating systems development, and sales and support. In January 2000, he became the chief executive officer of Microsoft.
Ballmer was born in 1956 and grew up near Detroit, Michigan. He graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and economics. Subsequently he attended Stanford University Graduate School of Business. He worked for Procter & Gamble for two years as assistant product manager before joining Microsoft.
Vern Raburn:
Raburn received 4% of the Microsoft founding stock. Raburn worked at Microsoft from 1978 to 1981. He was in charge of its Consumer Products Division.
After leaving Microsoft, he held senior or chief executive positions in Lotus Development Corporation, Symantec Corporation, the Paul Allen Group, and Eclipse Aviation Corporation.
Charles Simonyi:
Simonyi received 1.5% of the Microsoft founding stock. He went to work for Microsoft in 1981. He managed the development of Multiplan, Word, and Excel. While at Microsoft, he introduced the techniques of object-oriented programming and the Hungarian notation convention for naming variables.
Simonyi left Microsoft in 2002 to co-found Intentional Software. He wanted to develop his intentional programming ideas. This was a method of using domain experts to assist programmers in the automatic development of programs.
Simonyi worked at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center from 1972 to 1980. During this time, he guided the development of Bravo, the first “what you see is what you get” word processing editor.
Gordon Letwin:
Letwin received 1.5% of the Microsoft founding stock. He was one of the original 12 Microsoft employees. As his first project, he wrote a BASIC compiler. Later he became Microsoft’s lead architect for the OS/2 operating system. He left Microsoft in 1993 as a millionaire.
Letwin was a longtime employee of Microsoft. He stayed with them longer than anyone. However, he desired a break from programming.
Technology Venture Investors (TVI):
TVI purchased 5% of the Microsoft founding stock. TVI was the only venture capitalist firm that invested in Microsoft. TVI was co-founded by David F. Marquardt in 1980. David has served on the Microsoft Board of Directors since 1981.
David graduated from Columbia University in 1973 with a bachelor’s degree. He received an MBA degree from Stanford University in 1978. He began his venture capitalist career at Institutional Ventures associates.
Employee Stock Options:
Microsoft held an initial public offering of stock on March 13, 1986. One of the reasons that Bill Gates wanted to issue stock to the public was to provide a ready market for the stock his employees held. In order to encourage employees to keep working diligently, Microsoft handed out employee stock options. Early employees who became fully vested in their stock options became financially independent.
