David Rosenthal: prediction

Transcript context

…We didn’t. We would have [...]. I think he learned a good lesson there because he does not burn capital, as we will learn. He goes off to university at the Shandong University of Science and Technology, but his girlfriend at the time who would soon become his wife goes to another school that is about a 10-hour bus ride away. It’s on these bus rides between their universities that as legend has it, Eric starts daydreaming about how technology could one day bridge this physical gap between him and his girlfriend-soon-to-be-wife and many people around the world, and would lead to many things, eventually Zoom. But before that, he graduates, he ends up getting his master’s degree after undergrad. He graduates, he marries his girlfriend, he goes to work, and in 1994, the company he’s working for in China sends him to Japan for four months. While he’s in Japan, he sees Bill Gates give a speech there. These are the days of the information superhighway and he hears Bill talk about the information superhighway and he thinks, “This is the future.” David, I was looking at this in your research. It’s ironic given how Microsoft missed the web and how then Bill Gates had to about-face the company writing, that classic internet memo that he wrote. It’s amazing that Bill Gates is actually the one who ended up inspiring Eric and so many others when Microsoft almost had a very existential moment about the internet.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.