Thanks for the awkward photo shoots and memories: Bill Gates

Bill Gates, cofounder of Microsoft, marked the company’s 50th anniversary with an Instagram post.

He wrote, “Happy 50th birthday, @microsoft. Thanks for the memories—and awkward photo shoots.”

Hopping in on a popular trend, he shared a video of his younger self posing for photos, saying, “Unfortunately, I'll never feel cool again because this was me in the early Microsoft days.”


On April 4, 1975, Gates and Paul Allen founded Micro-Soft, laying the foundation for Microsoft’s rise. The code Gates printed on a teletype, though basic by today’s AI standards, was pivotal to the company’s early success.

In a blog post, Gates reflected on how he and the late Paul Allen rushed to create the first "software factory" after discovering the Altair 8800 in a 1975 Popular Electronics article. The Altair 8800 was a microcomputer designed in 1974 by Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS).

They realised they needed to adapt the 1964 Dartmouth BASIC to work with the Altair, but without a prototype, it was a challenging task. Despite the uncertainty, Gates eventually completed the code that became Altair's first operating system. This breakthrough laid the foundation for Microsoft’s future success.

"That code remains the coolest I've ever written," Gates wrote.

"Fifty years is a long time," he added. "It's crazy that the dream came true."