By Thinkman · December 24, 2016
The original source for this content is a Business Insider article on where the first 11 Microsoft employees ended up. As the original article noted, these things tend to get archived or removed over time — so I recreated the content here for my own records. All credit to Business Insider.
Also worth reading first: a note on the principles behind this site.
The famous photograph taken in 1978 — the original Microsoft team, eleven people who were at the beginning of what would become the most dominant software company in the world.
Thirty years later, Microsoft assembled the same group when Bill Gates left the company. Some had stayed. Most had gone on to lives nobody could have predicted from that first photo.
After leaving Microsoft's day-to-day operations in 2008, Bill Gates devoted himself full-time to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation — giving away the billions he made from Microsoft to global health, education, and poverty initiatives.
Bob Wallace left Microsoft, founded his own software company, and was known for his unconventional lifestyle. He passed away in 2002.
Paul Allen, Microsoft's co-founder, left the company in 1983 after a cancer diagnosis. He went on to own the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trail Blazers, fund scientific research, and invest in dozens of ventures. He passed away in October 2018.
Images and facts sourced from Business Insider. Reproduced here for personal record-keeping as online articles have a habit of disappearing. If images above fail to load they have been removed from the original Blogger CDN — the text content remains accurate.
