YouSaid · the spoken record

Steve Ballmer

lines on the record: 30
first: 2018-07-19
most recent: 2018-07-19
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, but that's kind of a zero sum game. When we win them, somebody else doesn't win them. So it's a little harder to say it's a broad contribution. But in LA, that would be a big contribution.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you asked a very specific question, what would I contribute to our country? What I hope we do is make some difference in the lives of kids. That's number two. Number one, hey, we democratized computing and putting that kind of power and capability for people to thrive, to investigate, to be smarter, to create more, I feel, immense pride about that. I put that number one. I think that was not only something that affected this country, but the world. Whatever we do philanthropically, I hope makes a big, big difference. It's hard to make a bigger difference than being involved in the popularization of computing.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Commitment. You really have to have your head in the game and be committed to be a good leader. There's two parts of leadership. One is leading people, and that's about commitment and people understanding you have commitment. The other part of leadership, which doesn't get talked about much, is you have to be a leader of ideas. The worst thing you can do both for your people and generals to say, let's go. And you point that way. And the truth is you should have gone that way. So leaders have to be leaders of ideas. The ideas compel the people, but then the ideas have to be right and you have to stay committed.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was a very, very shy kid, very shy kid. I was a shy kid when I got to Harvard and then I built my confidences. I built it because I was doing things and being successful. I was shy when I got to business school, when I got to Procter& Gamble. First day I started, a guy who wound up my roommate. He said it was like this. Hi, my name's Steve Ballmer and my palm's sweaty because I'm so nervous. So shy kid. I got better and better and I developed some confidence in public speaking. And it turns out I have something of a knack. And part of that is getting in front of your troops and pumping them up and tell a story. I will do. And Baswell's a weird environment because, of course, I don't have a lot of credibility. I'm an owner, for God's sakes. I'm not an expert. But, you know, at the end of the day, at least I can get into the game and be verbal and vocal.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm pretty happy with the way things worked out. I mean, I can go back and there's decisions I'd make differently if I was at Microsoft. But, you know, if I look at the span of work, we went from a company that had two and a half million in sales and 30 people to a company that had 100,000 people and 80 billion roughly of sales and lots of profit. I can feel good about that even though there were mistakes. I started out, the process with a lot of friends. I still have mostly the same friends as I did, which I feel very good about that. I'm in a very good place in my life now, probably in a way the best ever, although I wouldn't trade out anything I did in the past, at least at this age. I like being a little less busy. That's good for me. I'm pretty pleased.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're single purpose. What can we do to improve the chances that kids born at the bottom of the economic total pole their parents are move up economically? You're always going to have some people who are at the bottom of the economic total poll. It shouldn't just be the same people all the time. People should be moving up. People should have a shot at the American dream, which is the chance to do whatever you want to do. And that's not true for a lot of kids. When they're born, their probability of staying where they are economically is very, very high. I don't think that's okay. There are a lot of reasons. People point to education. Education's a part of it, but there are a lot of reasons why kids can't get an education. And I think it's important to take a look at that chain and then try to find not only the not-for-profits to invest in, we think it's very important to try to stimulate the right behaviors by government and the right.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I said, I really want a consolidated view of what government does. Where does the money come from? Where does it go? And oh, by the way, also, what are the impacts? If we're transferring wealth, what is quality of life look like? We're investing in education, what is the quality of the outcome, how good or how well are our kids doing?”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Time finding the numbers, which led to me starting this thing called USA Facts. And between USA Facts, our philanthropy, the Clippers, and having a good time, which in my case means exercising and playing golf, my life's pretty full.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had not really given it a ton of thought until I left. I again had this sort of hardcore notion. I supposed to just give it all for Microsoft until I leave. So I leave, what am I going to do? Well, owning a sports team was attractive. So within a few weeks, I went and visited Roger Goodell and Adam Silver, the NBA and NFL commissioners. I thought that would be a fun thing to do. And my wife, who'd been involved in philanthropic stuff, really focused in on foster kids and disadvantaged kids in the state of Washington. She said, come on, dude, it's time. You got to get involved. So I did. At first, I said, come on, government takes care of these problems. And she said, no, philanthropy's got a role. But it did intrigue me to what degree government really does help disadvantaged kids. I had a hard time.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, when I was CEO, I just didn't think it was right. Somehow I didn't feel right to me, and it's not like even with what I had done to diversify at that time, it's not like I was going to go broke if the Microsoft stock does poorly and it wasn't doing poorly. And I ran the company. If I didn't believe, and people knew I already had enough money, I should stay invested. I should stay there. When I left, I still loved the company. I did a little bit of stuff to diversify slightly. I put some money aside for charity.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think probably two factors. Number one, I took over at least at the worst time if you want your stock price to go up. I came in right at the heart of the dot-com bubble. Everything was sky high. The bubble breaks, and oh, by the way, Judge orders the breakup of Microsoft. That happens, I don't know, within several months of me taking over, and things fall down, and then you have to build back up. That's number one. By the end of my tenure, I had a certain kind of reputation with Wall Street, and not that favorable, not about my performance, but certainly people, hey, the guy's a grinder, he's going to keep doing this thing, but are all these new things going to actually break through profit-wise? And number two, I think mostly people on Wall Street would have said, I overinvested. I was spending too much money. And the only chance to reposition the company.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, he was the recommendation that I made, he used the recommendation that Bill Gates made. I thought he was a candidate to replace me, which is why we moved him into his last job, which was running one of the big divisions. And I was glad he got the job because he's done a great job.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there were probably two reasons. Number one, maybe it was late. And number two, after I left, while the company went ahead and bought it, I don't think there was the same level of enthusiasm at the board level and management level for scaling up and investing there.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They've had more success than I anticipated. I didn't sell them short, but they have had more success. Here's why I'm not saying I was completely dubious. It is very hard sometimes for big companies to do something very different. I call it doing a second trick. At the time, I would call Amazon a one-trick pony. It was doing this retail stuff. It was doing an awesome job. But to do a second trick, you don't get a lot of companies who do that. That doesn't mean Microsoft's out of the game. We started this thing called Azure and Office 365, and my successor, Satya, has taken the thing to very much new heights.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, we could have and should have. We should have done, in my opinion, we should have gotten in the hardware business, and that's why I blew that.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did try to buy the whole thing. Zuckerberg came up to Seattle. We met down there. I put a concrete financial offer on the table. But it's a little, Ross Perot tried to buy Microsoft from Bill Gates in like 79, and Bill said no. Founders really have a lot of love and passion around their stuff. And even though Facebook was tiny, I think it was 2009, and I offered, I don't know, 20 plus billion dollars, something like that, and Mark had absolutely no interest.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we were saying, what's the path for software, if you will, into the living room? And the only path that was really clear at the time was the video gaming systems. There was no way to be in the video game business and not build the hardware. We had been in the hardware business in a small way. We'd had our mouse product, a few other products along the way. And frankly, I think we probably in many ways should have done more hardware sooner.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was surprised. I was surprised. Bill had asked me to be president in 1998, and I said, fine. And that was another number two position. And I was fine with that. And then Bill came to me and said, hey, will you be CEO? And I asked him, do you really want me to be CEO or do you really kind of want me to be a figurehead? Just tell me. He says, no, I really want you to be CEO. And I would say, was I CEO because Bill stayed working every day until about 2008. And I would say I didn't feel like a total CEO probably until Bill wasn't working there every day in 2008 because there was a lot of shared responsibility.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and they got comfortable when we went public. They knew I wasn't going to be broke. And there was nothing physical. You could get your. What do all these people do? There's no product. What did they all do? So that was a confusing point Amisa smart guy, but he'd always ask me that every time we went through the campus.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By the late 80s, I would say for sure I knew the company's going to be something. I remember when Andy Grove who ran Intel said, Someday there'll be a hundred million computers a year sold. Bill and I looked at each other and said, he's nuts. There's never going to be 100 million. These days there's 300 million plus computer sold a year.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I started out as assistant to the president. I was Bill's assistant, basically, Chief Cook and Bottle Washer. So I set up the accounting, which there was some, but we needed to professionalize. It was the HR department. I hired everybody. When IBM came the first time about their personal computer, I became the kind of salesman on IBM. Why? I knew how to wear a tie. I was about the only guy around the place, and Bill said, you have a tie in a suit, why don't you come to the meeting?”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was apoplectic in a way. I mean, he didn't try to stop me, but I remember when I called home and my dad said, what the heck is software? He'd actually been involved installing Wang systems, old word processors. But what software? And then my mom said, why would a person ever need a computer? Now today you'd say that's crazy. But it wasn't crazy in 1980, but they said, okay, okay, we hear you, we hear you. If it doesn't work out, you go back to business school, right? I said, right, and then never came back.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, funny, you should mention that. A number of people did when I was there, Scott Cook, who started Intuit, was there. Jeff Immelt, who ran GE, he and I worked together on Duncan Hines brownie blueberry muffin and moist and easy snackcake mix. We were the dynamic drivers of brownie mix sales. So he was around Meg Whitman, came right after I left. It really was a great place.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was interesting because the guy who introduced us says, You guys are both kind of weird, energetic guys you should meet. So we did. And the time we met was just about the time he was starting Microsoft, plus or minus a month, I want to say. And that clearly was more than this is just going to be another random guy. I mean, a guy starting his own company. It was his second company he had done one in high school. He was clearly a special guy, and I got to know him pretty well.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My dad was an immigrant from Switzerland. He left Switzerland after World War II, worked for the US military as an interpreter at the war trials at Nuremberg because they were looking for German speakers who were not German citizens because they were afraid of that. And then he met his sponsor, was one of the GIs dad who he had worked with as an interpreter. I don't think he finished high school. He was never precise on that, certainly didn't go to college, but he worked at Ford. My mom actually is not an immigrant. Her parents were, and they came from, I guess it was probably Russia at the time.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Running the LA clippers. I mean, running Microsoft was a ton of fun. And it was kind of inspirational because we were working on stuff that literally transformed the world and I got a lot out of that and the intellectual challenges were strong and I loved that and I thought a unique value to add. But just for fun, fun, fun, there's really no stress running a basketball team except you really want to win.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I yell and scream. I've become a little more moderate, so I preserve my vocal cords because it certainly can be a problem when you're let's go. Let's get these, you know. Yeah, it can be an issue”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I got three principles. Number one, don't talk to anybody after a loss. That's number one. Coach, yes, but not players. Number two, you know, pump guys up, which I do usually with techs after a game, or sometimes I'll go talk to somebody. After big games in the locker room, when we lose or win our last game of the season in the locker room, and I go to training camp at the beginning of the year, give a little speech, a little bit of a pump-up, I guess you'd say.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do, in fact. We have 41 home games. I probably made 38 this year and maybe another seven away games. So I make it to a lot of games. And it's fun to be enthusiastic. I enjoy it. Things are most fun when it's your kid playing. Second most, you know, this owner thing is pretty good because you have a sense of the dynamics of the guys”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I bought, I think there were two reactions who bought the team. Number one, yes, as you described, yes, our teams, this has been a great investment. The second was, oh my God, I wonder if this guy's going to throw around money in a way that's going to, and the league has plenty of rules, so you can only, it's hard to outspend anybody else. But I think there was a little concern about that.”
2018-07-19 · The David Rubenstein Show · Steve Ballmer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source