Techmeme Ride Home (IHP Bonus) Shirish Nadkarni On Microsoft, Hotmail, MSN and Blackberry Internet Email
Sep 6, 2021
Shirish Nadkarni, a serial entrepreneur and former Microsoft executive, discusses his remarkable journey from arriving in the U.S. with just $25 to engineering the $400 million acquisition of Hotmail. He reveals the clever marketing strategies that propelled Hotmail's viral growth and the evolution of email services. Shirish also shares insights from his new book, guiding tech entrepreneurs through the challenges of startup life, and reflects on the transformative impact of mobile email before and after the iPhone revolution.
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Early Microsoft Days
- Shirish Nadkarni joined Microsoft in 1987, fresh out of business school at age 26.
- He was tasked with product managing Microsoft's entry into the email space, a daunting task as email was nascent.
Pre-Web Email
- In 1987, email was primarily used on intranets and corporate systems, not yet for personal use.
- Companies like Boeing, using mainframe systems like IBM Profs, were skeptical of PC-based email scalability.
MSN's Pivot
- Microsoft initially launched MSN as a proprietary online service to rival AOL.
- After realizing the internet's dominance, they pivoted MSN to a free web portal and acquired Hotmail.
