24 August 1995: Windows 95 launches with a Rolling Stones soundtrack
Microsoft launched Windows 95 with a huge marketing campaign built around the Start button and the Rolling Stones song Start Me Up. People lined up at midnight to buy an operating system. It introduced the Start menu and taskbar and made PCs friendlier for millions of new users. It also cemented Microsoft's dominance, which helped make it the most valuable company in the world by the end of the decade.
The lesson: Owning the platform everyone else builds on can produce extraordinary, long-lasting profits.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Microsoft at the start of 1995 → $160,000 today, vs $14,783 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 1995, the year it happened. That is 160.0 times the money, and $145,217 more than a plain index fund made over the same years.
What Microsoft teaches: A great business bought at a silly price can still deliver a lost decade; Microsoft's profits grew for years while its 2000 valuation slowly deflated.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | $3.00 | $160,000 | $14,783 |
| 2000 | $40.00 | $12,000 | $4,626 |
| 2003 | $20.00 | $24,000 | $7,727 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought Microsoft? Every starting year and the full story →
More Microsoft history
- 30 January 2007: Windows Vista launches to consumers
- 13 March 1986: Microsoft goes public
- 4 April 1975: Microsoft is founded in Albuquerque
- 25 April 2019: Microsoft reaches a $1 trillion market value
- 27 June 2008: Bill Gates' last day as a full-time Microsoft employee
- 4 July 1996: Hotmail declares independence from your ISP
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
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