Ben Gilbert: evaluation

Transcript context

…Okay. I thought I was going to be way, way, way harsher. And in fact, I didn’t know I was going to do this episode years ago, but I would have called it like a D in 2012, and it seems like over time it actually is getting… It takes a long time because it’s a big ship to maneuver, but it’s the right move to have Skype and Skype for Business and not have versions of Lync and some messenger and totally deprecate Communicator. It’s the right move. It was an amazing use of that capital considering other options that they could have done with it. And, unless of course we see some kind of big break where all the US companies in the next few years are allowed to bring that cash home, but I don’t really foresee that happening, bringing it home at a reduced tax rate. And on top of all that, I think having this consumer offering and a little bit of that consumer DNA with all the Skype teams that have built this product leaves them fairly well positioned for whatever is about to happen in the enterprise communication market that Slack has pioneered. You know, I’m sure they wish it looked more like Slack right now unless the slow steady growth of Skype, but if Skype Team’s the real thing, I’m excited to see it. Yup. I definitely agree with that. Yeah, it’s interesting to think about, you know, think back to one of our early episodes with Kurt DelBene talking about Acompli and Wunderlist and sort of recreating the Office Suite, and in particular, Outlook on mobile. And I got to wonder if, you know, Kurt led the Skype acquisition when he was at Microsoft the first time, I kind of wonder if the experience with Skype informed some of the things they did differently with Acompli. And in particular, making Javier, who was the COO of Acompli, head all of Outlook, not just Outlook Mobile but empowering him within the organization to really remake and it’s still work in progress and will be for a long time but I think Outlook has made huge strides from the massively bloated super old-school piece of software it was before the acquisition to the still really bloated but much nicer design and clearly making strides, and it's my most opened app on my iPhone, where it is today. And to compare that to Skype where yes, Tony stayed at Microsoft for a little while and was in the running to perhaps become CEO, but then he left.…

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