The Steve Ballmer Interview

**Ben Gilbert** (0:00)
All right, so David, Steve gave us the signed Clippers jersey with the name acquired on it. There's only one jersey. What are we going to do about this?

**David Rosenthal** (0:12)
Should we rock, paper, scissors for it? Well, you know what? No, no. You keep it. There's no Seattle basketball team. Keep it there.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:22)
All right. It'll go in Acquired Museum North.

**David Rosenthal** (0:25)
Great.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:26)
Perfect. All right. Let's do it.

**David Rosenthal** (0:28)
Let's do it.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:45)
Welcome to episode one of the summer 2025 season of Acquired, the podcast about great companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert.

**David Rosenthal** (0:55)
I'm David Rosenthal.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:56)
And we are your hosts.
Steve Ballmer is, among other things, arguably the very best investor of the last 20 years. It sounds a little funny to frame it that way, but here are the numbers. In 2014, when Steve left Microsoft, his net worth was $20 billion, almost entirely comprised of Microsoft stock. Today, 11 years later, it is a staggering $130 billion, according to Forbes. It is incredibly rare to reach this stratospheric level when you are A, not the founder of the company, and B, no longer CEO or even employed by the company. And all of this comes from just one investment decision. Just keep holding substantially all of his Microsoft stock.

**David Rosenthal** (1:45)
Incredible. We chat about it with him in the conversation to come.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:49)
Now, as most of you know, we did a big two-part Microsoft series last year on the history of the company up through winter when Steve transitioned the CEO role to Satya Nadella. Steve listened to those episodes and he had some thoughts that he wanted to share with his recollection of how things went down. Things like what made Microsoft so fabulously successful, what his missteps were as CEO. We wanted to share that as a recorded conversation with all of you. So we set up our cameras and our mics at his office, his philanthropy office, Ballmer Group in Bellevue, Washington, and we pressed record. So we'll go into everything from the misses on mobile, search, social, the huge wins in enterprise and cloud. Steve also reflects on his business lessons learned. He goes into why he stepped down as CEO, when he did, and he talks about his relationship with Bill Gates over the years. And of course, we had to talk with him a little bit about the Clippers and the new arena that Steve built and personally owns too.

**David Rosenthal** (2:48)
Yeah, Intuit Dome, incredible place, a cathedral of basketball, as Steve would put it.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:54)
Listeners, if you want to know every time an episode drops, check out our email list. It's the only place where we will share a hint of what our next episode will be. We'll share episode corrections, updates, and little tidbits that we learn from all of you about previous episodes. Come join the Slack to talk about this with us and the whole Acquired community. That is acquired.fm slash Slack, and the email list is acquired.fm slash email. If you want more acquired between our monthly episodes, check out ACQ2. We just released one with Zack Perret, the co-founder and CEO of Plaid.

**David Rosenthal** (3:27)
We've got some banger ACQ2 episodes coming up.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:31)
Yes, we do. Well, as most of you know, we are doing a massive, massive live show at the 6,000-seat Radio City Music Hall in New York City on July 15th with our friends at JP. Morgan Payments. There are just a few seats left, so get yours before they are gone at acquired.fm.nyc. The lineup for the night is going to be something very special, and we cannot wait to see you there.

**David Rosenthal** (3:56)
Yes, and speaking of, just like how we say, every company has a story, every company's story is powered by payments, and JP. Morgan Payments is a part of so many of their journeys from seed to IPO and beyond.

**Ben Gilbert** (4:08)
So, with that, this show is not investment advice. David and I may have investments in the companies we discuss, and this show is for informational and entertainment purposes only. On to our conversation with Steve Ballmer. Well, Steve, first of all, I noticed you prepared some printed materials here for us. Listeners should know we didn't ask for this in any way, but at 10 p.m. last night, you sent us a PowerPoint deck and said, I made you some slides. Sorry it got here so late. And Dave and I are looking at each other like we didn't ask you to prepare for this. Thank you from the materials.