From Startup to Exit
Welcome to the Startup to Exit podcast where we bring you world-class entrepreneurs and VCs to share their hard-earned success stories and secrets. This podcast has been brought to you by TiE Seattle. TiE is a global non-profit that focuses on fostering entrepreneurship. TiE Seattle offers a range of programs including the GoVertical Startup Creation Weekend, TiE Entrepreneur Institute, and the TiE Seattle Angel Network. We encourage you to become a TiE member so you can gain access to these great programs. To become a member, please visit www.Seattle.tie.org.
From Startup to Exit
Microsoft@50: The Launch of Windows 95, with SVP Brad Chase
In the 5th installment of the Microsoft@50 series, we interview Brad Chase, who was the SVP in charge of the launch of Windows 95. Later on, he took over the reins for MSN. Brad joined Microsoft in 1987 and was the first product manager responsible for the launch of the Microsoft Office on the Mac. Later he became the Group Product Manager for MS D0S 5.0. Brad negotiated the licensing of the famous Start Me Up song by the Rolling Stones that was used in Microsoft ads for Windows 95.
At JPMorgan Private Bank, wealth is understood to be more than just numbers. It's about creating a legacy, achieving dreams, and securing a family's future. Clients benefit from a personalized approach, working closely with experts in philanthropy, family office management, fiduciary services, and special advisory services. The mission is to make the financial journey as seamless as possible from the initial meet to ongoing management of assets. For more, visit privatebank.jpmorgan.com.
Brought to you by TiE Seattle
Hosts: Shirish Nadkarni and Gowri Shankar
Producers: Minee Verma and Eesha Jain
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@fromstartuptoexitpodcast
And I was doing this talk on strategy because my thesis is that the most important thing to business success is building a winning strategy. You know, you could have a leader that is very charismatic, very empathetic, very smart. You could have a team that has all those qualities. But the problem is if you don't make the right bets, you're not going to be successful. And you can look at Microsoft as a perfect example of it.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome to the Startup to Exit podcast, where we'll bring you world-class entrepreneurs and VCs to share their hard-earned success stories and secrets. This podcast has been brought to you by Ty Seattle. Ty is a global nonprofit that focuses on fostering entrepreneurs's. Become a member www.seattle.org.
SPEAKER_03:Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of our podcast from Startup to Exit. I'm here with my co-host Sharesh Natkarney. My name is Gary Shankar. We both serve on the board of TI Seattle, which produces this podcast. First of all, we both want to thank you for all the support that you've given us over the last year, where we have brought this podcast to all of you. And I hope all of you have enjoyed all the content that we are bringing from our guests. We are launching a very special series. We are launching a series that is very close to both our hearts because we are both Seattleites. Microsoft just turned 50. And as a tribute to the company and the impact it's had on the world and our city, we are going to talk to some of the very early executives who shaped and grew the Microsoft brand to what it is today. I hope all of you enjoy it. We will be talking to many of them. And over the time, you will learn a lot of things about the early years of Microsoft. Thank you all and hope you enjoy it.
SPEAKER_04:Today is our fifth episode in the Microsoft at 50 uh podcast series. Very pleased to welcome Brad Chase, who's well known for his Windows 95 fame. Brad and I joined the same year in 1987, left a little bit ahead of him. But we also uh worked at different times uh on MSN. Uh Brad was the senior vice president uh in charge of uh Windows 95 initially and then went on to lead uh MSN. So welcome Brad. Great to see you again.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, likewise.
SPEAKER_04:Great, great. So uh as we discussed, uh you know, you're well known for your Windows 95 fame, but you did a lot of important things before you worked on Windows 95. So can you share a little bit about your early career? Uh starting with you know what made you join uh Microsoft? Uh I mean at that time Microsoft was kind of getting known, but not necessarily an industry leader. So, what made you join Microsoft and what kind of uh products you worked on initially?
SPEAKER_01:So when I was working as a sales rep, my father uh built a Heathkit computer. Heathkit was this place you would go to get these kits, and you'd build radios and TVs and stuff like that. He built a computer and then he didn't know what to do with it, and he gave it to me. And it was this gigantic thing, super long, and it had a you booted it up with a keyboard, uh, not a keyboard, a numeric pad, sorry. Um, and it had a separate, you know, kind of CPU unit with that numeric pad and a and a monitor and a separate keyboard, and it took up a huge desk. And I started playing with it, and I realized, uh, I think this personal computer thing is gonna be the future. And so um I decided at that point that I was gonna go back to school. And I was a little too old, I thought, at that point, to become a good programmer. So I decided to go the business route. And I went to business school, and then I targeted tech companies that were involved with the PC industry and ended up at Microsoft. That's great.
SPEAKER_04:So, what was your first job uh as product manager having joined uh Microsoft?
SPEAKER_01:My first job is I was a product manager on Microsoft Works for the Macintosh, at the time, the third best-selling uh software product on the Macintosh. And Microsoft at that time got more of its revenue from Macintosh applications than it did from MS DOS applications. Oh, I remember that, yeah. Yeah. And then I so I did works for a while, and then I was the first group product manager, or I don't remember my towel, whatever. I was the the head of Microsoft Office, um, marketing Microsoft Office.
SPEAKER_04:And that was that on the Macintosh or uh on the PCS vote?
SPEAKER_01:We had the Mac product, and I was there when we launched the Windows product. Wow, okay. Yeah, and I led that group, or I well, it wasn't much of a team. There's like three of us or something, but yeah, so I was in charge of that team and that effort, and then I got recruited, and it's a long story.
SPEAKER_04:Tell us about it. Yeah, tell us about it.
SPEAKER_01:Um, Mike Mabel, who was the head of the applications division, called me in his office and said, Brad, the guys at MS DOS want to talk to you about launching MS-DOS 5.
SPEAKER_04:Oh my god, MS-DOS? Is that is that the MS-DOS that uh existed before a lot of people uh hearing this podcast were born? Correct. Yes.
SPEAKER_01:MS-DOS, and I said to Mike, look, you know, I'm on Microsoft Office, it's core to the strategy for Windows and Microsoft. Why would I go to MS-DOS, which is, you know, at the tail end of its history, you know, even though for those who don't know, MS-DOS was the product that fueled Microsoft's early success and really fueled Microsoft's success into the early 90s and maybe even the mid-90s before Windows 95. But, you know, I it felt like I was going to a non-strategic project, and Mike said to me, Well, change is good. And I went back to my office and I was kind of disappointed in Mike because he was kind of a mentor and he was giving me this what felt like rote advice. But I got the message. Microsoft wanted me to go do that. So I led the launch of uh MS-DOS 5, and the the key innovation there was we had the MS-DOS 5 upgrade. And so it was the first time in the history of MS-DOS that you can take a computer that had an older version of MS-DOS and upgrade it to MS-DOS 5. Previous to that, the only way to get a new version of MS-DOS was to buy a new computer. And that was a big deal. We had Midnight Madness sales, and people actually went pretty crazy about the MS-DOS 5 upgrade. We had Dave Brubeck play Take 5 at the launch, and it was uh in New York on a on a boat that was called DOS Boat, and I mean, you know, it was a lot of a lot of fun. Uh and after MS-DOS 5, which was quite successful, I became the general manager for MS-DOS 6. So I ran development and marketing for MS-DOS 6. That was the last big version of MS-DOS. And then it was after that that I had to decide what to do because MS-DOS was you know no longer basically. And I had some opportunities to go be the general manager for like Microsoft Word and run all of that. But ultimately I decided to do the marketing of Windows 95, and that's where how I got to Windows 95. Got it, got it.
SPEAKER_04:So your marketing strategy for Windows 95, the the uh three E's, uh, which is I think really nice uh you know uh way to encapsulate it, which is uh educate, excite, and engage. So tell us more about uh your your marketing strategy uh for Windows 95. Because that's a really important you know release. First time I think Microsoft had a Windows product that uh you could say was better than the Macintosh.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it was an amazing product. So you know, one one of the things I get a lot of kudos and my team uh for the marketing of Windows 95, but it all starts with the fact that the development team built a great product with our input too. But they wrote the code, obviously, and and those guys, you know, David Cole and his team did just an amazing job. But uh Windows 95 was the product that ushered computers into the mainstream, and there um and I think people may have sensed that possibility because there was incredible interest in Windows 95 everywhere you went. And so when I became the marketing leader, all that was happening was we were trying to push away everybody who was trying to find out more about the product and learn about it, and you know, everybody wanted to hear the latest rumor about it, whatever. And one night I went home and finally, after the kids were to bed, I was thinking about it, and I decided that we needed to flip the whole marketing strategy on its head. And instead of trying to keep people from learning about Windows 95, that we should encourage people to learn about Windows 95, even though the product wouldn't be out for a while. And so I came up with the educate and engage and excite strategy, the e strategy, as you mentioned, to try to get people to learn about it, to get excited about it, and for third parties in particular to engage about it with it, figuring that that would speed up the adoption of Windows 95 when it launched because people would already be very familiar with it. And the ultimate goal was to make Windows 95 a consumer phenomenon. So everybody would know about it, would have heard about it. And I like to say, well, in fact, I told the team that about a couple weeks before the launch, when Doonesbury ran a comic strip for a week making fun of Windows 95, that in fact we had achieved our goal to become a consumer phenomenon. So that was that was the goal to become a consumer phenomenon. And the strategy was all about stopping from preventing people from learning about Windows 95, but instead to try to teach them, get them excited, get them engaged so that when it launched, it would the transition would be simpler.
SPEAKER_04:Got it. Um so what are some of the key elements of the launch? Um, I'm sure uh, you know, uh, you know, getting Wolf Mossberg to bless Windows 95 was uh pretty important. Did he write about it before uh it launched or was it uh at launch?
SPEAKER_01:Well, his main review was at launch, and I remember it very well because Walt and I were were very close. And I I was the first Microsoft person he met with when he became a technology reporter, actually. And that at that time I met with him about MS DOS 5. But um when Windows 95 shipped, he did a review, and that review was very positive, but he kind of said, Well, uh, I won't give my full you know recommendation to upgrade until you know we find out if the product's got any kinks or problems. And so after a few months, I called up Walt and said, Walt, you need to do another review of Windows 95. And he said, Brad, I already did a review of Windows 95. And I'm like, But Walt, you promised your readers you would get back to them. And he's like, Well, you're right, you got me on that one. And so he did, and then he recommended Windows 95. So our, you know, that was a that was a key moment because Walt and I had many debates uh, you know, where we disagreed about stuff and agreed about stuff, and but it was all in a very uh positive and constructive, you know, form and tone. I really, really respected Walt uh a lot, still do. Um, but that was only one part of what we did. I mean, the PR effort was gigantic, obviously, with Windows 95, but we had all sorts of programs from demo disks to trainings of corporate people to working with OEMs to consumer workshops to uh the the whole beta test process to uh uh to you know the launch itself, which was obviously a big deal and through uh you know a major event all around the world, uh to the you know, to the Rolling Stones deal for Start Me Up, which you know to this day I still get asked about all the time. So, you know, uh all those things combined to make it a great, great launch event. And again, I want to you know reinforce that it was an incredible product and uh and the product you know you can't you can't market a crappy product in the software industry and be successful, but you can screw up a good product or help make a good product successful. Um in this case, we took a great product and helped make it successful with a really stellar marketing effort by my team and other people around the world. We kind of created a template and messaging and what we were trying to achieve, and then all the Microsoft people around the world built on that, and so they had a lot of creative ideas as well. Got it, got it.
SPEAKER_04:Um, so did the um OEMs um embrace Windows 95 uh wholeheartedly, or did you have to kind of convince them?
SPEAKER_01:No, for the most part, they embraced it. Again, that was one of the benefits of the of the Educate Excite Engage Marketing Strategy because there was so much hype about Windows 95, no one wanted to be left out. So the PC manufacturers had Windows 95 on their PCs the day of the launch on August 24th, 1995. And software developers had products ready, training people had training videos ready, you know. It uh uh people who made uh hardware add-ons had, you know, for plug and play had had products ready. You know, so it was it was a gigantic industry effort. I mean, it was the software launch of the 90s, I would say, um, for sure. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And a template that was probably you know, in some ways followed by by others like Apple later. Although Apple never was as forthcoming with their product information. Apple's always more secretive, but but they also did you know have done obviously tremendous launches. Steve Jobs is a terrific marketing person, and he did a really nice job, you know, especially with the early edition versions of the iPhone and so on. So, yeah, it was a really a tremendous time. And then as soon as we launched, of course, everybody wanted to know how we got the rights to the song and start me up for our ads. The ads were a huge success and tested off the charts. Um, and so rumors started flying that Bill called up Mick Jagger and paid him$14 million for the rights to the start me up and you know, all these crazy rumors. I think the Stone started that one to increase the price of uh future songs they might license. Um, but actually, I did that deal uh over several months, including a uh a trip to Amsterdam to meet with them. So it was, you know, it was uh just a really terrific and fun project to be working on with a uh a great team of people who really came together who each built their educated excite engaged plans and e-strategy for each of their segments. My team was organized by segment, customer segments, so like a PR team, a corporate team, a consumer team, an OEM team, uh et cetera, et cetera. So it was really great.
SPEAKER_04:Great, great. So I I uh heard a rumor that uh there's some talk about whether the start button should be called the start button or the go button.
SPEAKER_01:Uh is there something to that story? It wasn't a big deal. Uh the it was the start button the whole time. But there was one day where I got called to Bill's office, and Bill said to me, Hey Brad, what do you think about changing the start button to the go button? Um no, please don't. Yeah, I I I I mean, you know, it wasn't a bad idea really, but it wasn't it wasn't the right thing to do. So um so I explained why it wasn't the right thing to do, and Bill said, okay, and that was it. So it wasn't a big deal. Got it.
SPEAKER_04:Okay, good, good, good. And work done with your start me up song. Uh, we'll get into that in more more detail. So uh let me turn it over to Gowri to continue the discussion.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Uh Brad, thanks uh for coming on and uh uh reminiscing uh the uh the mid-90s. Well, before we sort of go further into the Windows 95, you did you the the e-strategy, as you explained to a minute ago, do you think that propelled the software into a consumer product? Prior to that, somewhere today they call it prosumer, but it was hobbyist and enthusiast and you know, the DOS five, six, they were good products, but this kind of went left from the pages of uh technology magazines to people magazine. That's that's not a that's not a that's a non-trivial move for any company, let alone a software company in the 90s, because there's still uh uh, you know, uh there was there was still some mystery uh associated with software, or they thought, oh, this is for people who really, really are smart. Do you uh see that that change happen and that your you and the team were quite responsible for ushering software into consumer?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I don't know if we could take full credit for that. That would be bold, but that's what we were trying to do. Uh-huh. The whole thing, you know, about making it a consumer phenomenon that I mentioned earlier uh was one of the was sort of the key goal of the Windows 95 marketing effort. And you are very astute to point out that really, you know, the the whole PC phenomenon was a enthusiast phenomenon, you know. In the earliest days, you know, in the very early days, you know, you you basically didn't use a PC unless you programmed. You used Microsoft Basic or, you know, or some you know, stuff like that. And you and so that it was really a hobbyist product. And Windows 95 really was the product that ushered computers into the mainstream. And I'd like to think that the marketing effort of my team had a significant amount to do with that. Propelled, of course, by a product that was much easier to use and well well designed, uh, with a great user experience and key features, you know, like preemptive multitasking and and you know, and uh plug and play and you know, a uh great user experience that that helped, you know, um make it happen. And then another thing which we forget sometimes is that you know the processing power was improving. So at that time we had more slightly more powerful computers come out. Um and so that allowed for people to to you know feel more comfortable even if they weren't an enthusiast, because they you know, the computers and software worked a little more uh rapidly at that time. So I think it was a combination of of many things that led to it, but I'd like to believe that our marketing effort certainly was a major contributor to taking computers from the hobbyist realm to the mainstream consumer realm.
SPEAKER_03:And you know, uh Microsoft has not been credited as much, say compared to Apple, of being the consumer device, right? But if you really think of it, uh Windows 95 reshaped retail, because I uh a lot may not remember the Circuit City and Best Buy and those kind of retailer Radio Shack, you know, they drew people in just to see what it was, and then you reshape a lot of OEMs, you know. Those days there was Gateway, Dell, and those OEMs uh in addition to established uh IBMs and others. It looked like it made many other verticals, industries, because suddenly everything had to work together, and the consumer was pushing them into making it work together. It wasn't just like, okay, I can buy a software, I'll put it on my, you had to make all of it work. Uh obviously Moore's law helped us significantly, but it seems like the shift was just not for software. It was for retail, it was for OEMs, it was for many other uh players who kind of came together in their in in uh in the consumer's mind that they all had to work together.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think that's a good observation, and it's very true. I mean, egg ed software was the big deal then. Yeah, they had Midnight Madness for Windows 95 as well. Yeah. And you know, people lining up and selling the product really cheaply. Uh so you know, it was it was a combination of all those factors for sure that helped, you know, ignite uh the industry and the and the uh movement of of software and hardware into into the consumer mainstream. And and another thing that's worth mentioning is it was also one of the first products where the consumer momentum helped propel the the enterprise momentum because the customers, you know, of of Windows ninety five wanted to use Windows ninety five in their workplace. And so that would put a lot of pressure on a lot of IT people to to respond and figure out their rollout plans for Windows ninety five. And so, you know, that's happened in many other places. Since then. I mean, the iPhone started as a consumer phenomenon, and now a lot of enterprises use it. But Windows 95 also pioneered a lot of that as well.
SPEAKER_03:And if you look at OpenAI ChatGPT, you know, the consumers really took to it. Yeah, albeit you could I could write better poetry, was the first application. But since then, if you look at the whole agentic, right, it's similar. It's a consumer push that's got the enterprises to say, oh, we better start doing it. It might have got there, but seems like the Windows 95 uh model has repeated once in uh for iPhone, another again for OpenAI. It seems like it's uh the marketing playbook that you wrote for Windows 95 probably worked again and again in in many, many other launches.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, for the internet as well. I mean, the internet itself was propelled by consumer uh momentum as well. Uh so I mean one of the lessons I've learned in life is that generally if you do something really well and everything goes really well, you get a little too much credit sometimes. And sometimes if you don't do uh as well about something, you generally get too much blame. Um you know, it's like the quarterback in football. They if the team doesn't do well, everyone blames the quarterback or something. But yeah, but yeah, I mean I don't I don't I don't want to overdo the my own pat myself on the back too much or my you know too much, but we my me and my team did a really nice job and I think we did pioneer many things uh that uh became now staples of of you know sort of future product or software launches and uh that's something to be very proud of. I mean the three of us and many others were uh central in the you know building of the PC industry, and that was quite a special thing to be a part of. And then we are kind of got to repeat that for the internet, which was a you know, again, another major uh you know, milestone in in in in tech the technology world that we got to be a part of again. And you know, now AI is kind of another uh you know sort of transformation period that uh that's affecting the industry. And and yeah, Windows 95 was sort of maybe the first set of rocket ships in that regard.
SPEAKER_03:In the beginning you mentioned that uh your inspiration was uh your dad who brought in the you know do-it-yourself PC at your home, and you saw, hey, the potential was great. And but seems like if I were to uh read the tea leaves or at least interpret it, that stuck with you because you pushed uh every sense, uh every product that you pushed was, hey, make it easy so that everybody can use it because you didn't want to be a programmer, which means you had to make it so simple that the rest of the world, which was lots of non-programmers, had to use your product. Was there a subtle message that you got or that stuck with you from when your dad brought the do-it-yourself kit uh to your house?
SPEAKER_01:Um yeah, you know, I would say that the lesson I learned early on was that the most important part of the marketing mix is the product. And I kind of mentioned earlier on that a marketing person can help make a great product more successful. But a marketing person, unless it's a commodity product, and that's a whole nother big deal. But in the technology industry, for the most part, you know, you can't market your way to success with a crappy product. And so um, and as a sort of a consumer uh uh sort of core business person at heart, I cared a lot about making the product right. And spent a lot of time trying to, you know, work with the product team and the marketing team to add ease of use wherever possible. Now, also to give credit, that was part of the whole credo for Windows 95 in the first place. We always talked about Brad Silverberg talked about making the product uh work great for his mom so she could use it, and uh the development team was very focused on ease of use. So I again I want to uh give credit to many people who you know on the team who really advocated for the ease of use that helped the success of Windows 95 and other Microsoft products, as both of you guys know. Um but yeah, it was a focus for me as well.
SPEAKER_03:So uh you worked on Apple before I mean before you went out to MSDA. Uh that experience of working with with Apple and the way they packaged and and delivered products, how much of that changed your view into what other OEMs were doing? Because the OEMs were compared to Apple, were in a slightly different realm. They were assembling things and they were putting software. The idea of uh having it all vertically integrated was unique to Apple and not to others. How much of your Apple working with Apple experience uh helped you convince the OEMs to uh to get on you all the various products you launched in uh at Microsoft, starting with Windows 95?
SPEAKER_01:You know, canonly not much. Um the it you have to go back and remember what Apple was like back then. Um my strategy with Microsoft Works was I'm the third best-selling Microsoft uh product on the Macintosh and the third best-selling Macintosh product overall. I've got to work with Apple because the only way I'm gonna I'm gonna get I don't have much marketing budget. So they so what I decided was I wanted to work with Apple, and I got Apple to bundle works with some small business stuff. And I worked with Apple a lot, but the problem is back then Apple was really messed up. Um they were reorging every six months and new, bringing new people in all the time, new leadership. They were kind of a mess. So there wasn't really that much to learn from Apple in those days. They built a great product, the Mac was a great product, but for the most part, Apple was kind of um, you know, sort of hanging on with chewing gum and scotch tape and you know all that kind of stuff back in those days. Um I remember once going to an Apple meeting when I was on Microsoft Works or Microsoft Office, and I was walking to the meeting, and a guy had in this cubicle had a t-shirt, and the t-shirt had Apple USA written on it, which was the name of the USA division, and it had the date, and I don't remember what the date was, but say it was you know 1989 or 1990 or you know, something in that realm, 88, and it had it crossed off, and then he had 10 other dates written on there because those were all the dates that they kept reorganing, and and every date was like a line through it with the with the new new date. So so I really didn't learn that much from Apple because at that time Apple was trying to find its way.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and I'm glad you you sort of shed light because the there's no memory of the history of Apple, right? I mean they I mean now they think they everybody's like, hey, they launched great products, and but there was a period of uh that they went through till probably the till uh as jobs came back to Apple and when um Microsoft invested in uh in Apple at that time, there was this turmoil of their existence, and they just didn't become the company that everybody credits to. And you guys played a role. Very few remember, you played a role in investing and keeping it propped up. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, Bill helped save Apple. It's a crazy crazy story when you think about it. And yeah, you know, um Steve Jobs had a good, I mean, as a uh, you know, as a person, he had his challenges perhaps, but um he you know he had a really good eye for for good products and and what needed to be done. Yeah. Um, but it took Microsoft saving him to to give given that opportunity.
SPEAKER_03:Very few remember that. You know, very few remember that. Uh so uh you wrote a book. Uh I mean uh Sherish has written too, so yeah, uh I'm in the midst of uh elite authors here. So uh what was the reason you decided to write a book uh called Strategy First? And what was the message you wanted to get out and uh uh talk a little bit about that and uh hope our viewers and listeners uh buy your book?
SPEAKER_01:Well, yeah, um so it started with me doing uh talks to you know uh entrepreneurs or people that might be in like Thai and um and business school students and businesses would bring me in. And I was doing this talk on strategy because my thesis is that the most important thing to business success is building a winning strategy. You know, you could have a leader that is very charismatic, very empathetic, very smart, you could have a team that has all those qualities. But the problem is if you don't make the right bets, you're not gonna be successful. And you can look at Microsoft as a perfect example. I mean, Microsoft Bill bet on the PC, then bet bet on languages, then bet bet on operating systems, then bet on the graphical user interface, GUI, um, and you know, and and later bet on the cloud, bet on AI. You know, and we miss some bets too, but uh everyone does. Every no one gets every bet right. But I I realized that there wasn't enough discussion about how strategy is the most important thing. And if you don't get your strategy right, nothing else matters. So I started doing these talks, and then people would come up to me after these talks and say, So where's your book? And I'm like, Well, I haven't written a book, so I decided to write the book. And now I uh I just finished the second edition of the book. Uh I don't know when this podcast is actually gonna air, but the second edition will be available probably in a week or two.
SPEAKER_03:Oh in in time when we publish the publish this episode. So it's perfect. Yeah. I'm glad you were able to plug uh get get that get one in. So I hope our uh uh viewers and listeners buy the second edition and refresh on uh refresh the uh for those who have read the first book as to the updates you made. Um you mentioned uh early on uh uh you went to Amsterdam uh to negotiate with uh uh with Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones to for the license. What was that like? Was it like in a in a room filled with smoke? Because that time it was not legal in the state of Washington.
SPEAKER_01:No, there was no illegal drugs involved. Uh it's really a fun story. So um the way it worked back in those days is that we would write a creative brief and give it to the ad agency, and then they would come up with the ad concepts based on the one or two page brief of uh which had our goals and what we were trying to achieve. And the ad agency kept coming and presenting concepts and I wasn't accepting them. They weren't right. So, like the third the the third or the fourth time I can't remember now, which is a unusual uh number of times. Usually they get it right the first or second time. But uh and then they were smart people, don't get me wrong about that either. They you know, it's just that I was looking for I I had very high expectations of what I needed to achieve my you know consumer phenomenon goals. And so they came like the third or fourth time and presented the concept for start me up. And I was like, that's fantastic, that's right on strategy, that's great. Uh let's do it. And they're like, Well, we have a problem. Um I'm like, what's the problem? And they said we can't get access to the song rights unless we are willing to pay ten million dollars uh to sponsor the next stones tour. And and they knew I didn't have ten million dollars in my budget to do that. And so then I was mad. I was like, Why why why did you present me a concept I can't execute? And they were like, Well, we were hoping you would go negotiate with the stones. So I flew to Amsterdam, I didn't meet with Mick Jagger, I met with you know members of his team uh and we banged it up all day long and did not come to an agreement. And then they said, Well, let's do it again tomorrow, and then you could stay for the unplugged concert we're gonna have that night. Um and I said, Look, I can't stay. You know, as you guys know, you know, life could be quite frenetic in Microsoft. And on Windows 95, I had no free time. I had to fly back for other important stuff. So they said, Well, why don't you come to the dress rehearsal tonight? So I went to a dress rehearsal at an old um famous theater in Amsterdam called the Paradisio. And I was one of only two non-stones personnel in the building, and I got a complete private, basically private concert. They went through the whole thing. Oh unbelievable. Yeah, I told the whole story on my website because people, you know, wanted to know the whole story. So they played a whole concert um and it was really fantastic. And I thought, wow, you know, this is amazing. And so then at the end they said, Do you want to meet the Rolling Stones? I thought about it for a second, I'm like, you know, it can't get any better than the private concert I just got. And I had met a lot of famous people, and I, you know, I didn't have any like I wasn't starstruck, so I didn't really need to meet the Rolling Stones. And I was still negotiating, so I you know, I didn't want to seem like, you know, some guy who was, you know, uh, you know, starstruck with the Willing Rolling Stones or something. So I said, no, I don't need to meet the Rolling Stones. Um so we left the concert, I flew back, and we continued to negotiate. Eventually, you know, just in the nick of time, my four ad team was going apoplectic because we didn't have a lot of time because we got the deal done. And to this day, I I tell everyone when I tell this story that half the people I tell the story to think I was the biggest idiot in the world for not meeting the Rolling Stones. And then the other half say you were the wisest person for not meeting the Rolling Stones because you had a perfect concert and you know it could only go downhill. So I don't know what the right answer is, but you know, that is what happened. And um there it's a longer story, and like I said, I go through the details, more of the details on my website, but uh but it's uh it was a lot of fun. And we got the deal done, and then the ads were fantastic. And and when the team presented me the final ad, or what they you know wanted me to prove, I was so impressed with what the team had done. I only made one change to the ad, which is if you go back to the ad and watch it, it's available on YouTube. Um at the end, a little girl turns her head just to the sort of to the beat of the music. And I wanted a dramatic ending to the ad, and they didn't have that. They had everything else perfect. And so I just told them I need a dramatic ending, they added that, and we were gone.
SPEAKER_03:Oh wow, that's awesome. Uh that's a that's a that's a great story. Yeah, yeah. Uh you know, we the only thing I could say is there was no Instagram then, so even if you had gone, only you could you nobody would believe you be uh you couldn't post it anywhere. So hey, I saw Big Jagger. None of that. You could you probably could have a picture in the mantle, but that's about it. You can't you can't uh it can't get better uh better than that. So if you could share um your website that you mentioned so that people can visit and read the whole story uh for our listeners. We'll we'll also put it in the link when we publish the episode.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's bradchase.net, really so. Okay.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, that's easy. So hopefully uh all our listeners and uh viewers go out and uh uh read the whole story of uh Rolling Stones uh and enjoy the negotiations that you did with them. Uh that's pretty awesome.
SPEAKER_01:Uh yeah, it was pretty crazy. Yeah, it was fun.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think there has been uh I I at least I cannot recall another special song that uh since then. I mean, there have been many that Microsoft has done since then, but that one was such a big uh dramatically different uh you know music uh licensing deal that was done for a software product. Till then there was a lot being done, but this was completely different. Very, very different.
SPEAKER_01:I don't I don't know for sure, but some people have told me that it may have been the first or at least one of the first times that a major uh rock song was used in a in an ad like that. Um I don't know. I haven't tried to look up the history of it, but um, but I do know that was the first ad Microsoft ever did, uh broad consumer television ad for a product. We had done Microsoft ads before, but we'd never done a product ad. That was the first time we did that.
SPEAKER_03:It was more. I mean, by by then that song was an anthem. It was, I mean, in the in the uh, you know, uh anthology of all Rolling Stone songs, that one was was up there and it was uh it was used many, many, many. I mean, I uh football games used it at that time. So uh but it was still in a stadium, it was not like like on TV, uh along with another product.
SPEAKER_01:People still tell me, here we are almost 30 years later. Well, it'll be 30 years actually, now you think about it on August 24th. People still tell me that when they hear Start Me Up, they think of Windows 95, even 50. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:That's amazing.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you maybe on August 24th, uh, coinciding the 50 years uh uh celebration Microsoft is doing, they'll have a 30 years of Windows 95 launch of the Start Me Up song.
SPEAKER_01:Uh Big Jagger is still around. Big Jagger is still around. Yeah, we should we should relicense the product the song again and do something new. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, Brad, that's just that's an amazing story. Amazing story. Uh I'll let uh Shirish uh bring it back and talk about more serious things about uh about the things you've uh you've contributed at your yeah at your time at Microsoft.
SPEAKER_04:All right, sounds good. Yeah, great story, uh Brad. Great story. I guess I just uh one final question since this is a podcast really meant for entrepreneurs, is you know, you worked uh with different uh startup companies. You're involved with a company called Visvria, which I was also an investor in, and then subsequently you've also been advisor to uh various startups. What is one piece of advice that you would give to entrepreneurs uh from your experience at Microsoft that uh you know that they would benefit from?
SPEAKER_01:So the piece of advice I give entrepreneurs all the time is to make sure that they're building a winning strategy and that they're making the right bets. That was key to the success of Microsoft, right? Uh as I mentioned earlier, Microsoft bet on the PC, or Bill in many ways, bet on the PC, bet on languages, bet on the operating system, bet on GUI, graphical user interface, i.e. Windows and Windows applications, you know, that those bets and future bets like the cloud and AI, all those bets, betting on those things was the key. And if you're an entrepreneur entrepreneur starting a business, and this is core to what Strategy First, my book, is all about, you need to make the right bets. And the right bets generally have three components you have to think about. The first is customer value. Unless you're in a commodity product, you have to really think about what your customer value is uh for for whoever your customers are. The second is is uh you know, what is your market potential? There's lots of products that have customer value, but can't make a lot of money. And so you have to think about what your market potential is. And third is your ability to execute on those two things. Execution is uh key to strategy because if you don't execute well, you can't provide the customer value or the market potential you're trying to reach. And the other key piece of that is all those things only matter relative to the competition. Because you could have incredible customer value, but being in a marketplace where someone else has even more customer value. And so you have to think about your business strategy and your unique bet and what how that works relative to the competition. And the components, the key components, as I said before, are customer value, market potential, and execution.
SPEAKER_04:You have a nice formula for that, right? E is equal to mc squared, nice way to remember.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I I did a riff on the famous, you know, uh Albert Einstein uh relativity equation, E E equals M C squared. Yeah, it's E times M C squared in my in my case, and that's what I call the strategic theory of relativity, or and and I talk in my book about how you can use it, not you can't get exact numbers or anything, but you can use it as a guide to your thinking, as a way to to uh force yourself to step back and say, Am I building the right strategy relative to the company?
SPEAKER_04:Um great to catch up after so many years. Uh uh I'm sure you're doing uh well uh advising lots of uh startups. Uh we'd love to have you uh on our Thai panel in the future. Talk about your book and talk about your um theory. Uh so thanks again for uh spending some time with us and uh uh all the best with uh your twenty fifth uh anniversary.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well yeah thirtieth actually for Windows 95. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, no, it's been my pleasure to I mean you two are obviously very, very accomplished yourselves. I mean and and I'm sure people can learn a lot from you, but it'd be my pleasure to be on a panel or do a talk at at one of your one of your events and I'm really excited that that I got to to be on your podcast. Excellent thank you. All right thank you so much.
SPEAKER_03:Thank you for listening to our podcast from Startup Exit brought to you by DI Seattle. Assisting in production today are Isha Jayne and Mini Verma. Please subscribe to our podcast and rate our podcast wherever you listen to them. Hope you enjoyed it
