February, 2009

U.S. House of Representatives Democratic Caucus Retreat
Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer
Williamsburg, Virginia, February 6, 2009

STEVE BALLMER: Well, I want to thank Jay, I want to thank the speaker and all of you for the opportunity to be here today and chat with you.  It's a real honor to have a chance to share some thoughts on the economy and on innovation, and hopefully spur some thoughts on how we all participate in restarting long term economic growth.

As Jay was telling my story, so to speak, I thought I'd put in one parenthetic that might be of interest.  When I got to Microsoft and we were this tiny little company, we didn't have the budget to put people up in hotels, so I lived with Bill.  And every time I sat down, in every corner, nook and cranny of couches, tables, I'd find these little yellow pieces of paper with Bill's writing that had a bunch of people's names and companies' names and numbers.

So, finally -- I think of myself as pretty good pattern matching.  Actually I was sitting next to Congressman Frank, and we were both trying to see which of the six states that are going to be still bigger than North Carolina by 2015.  So, we're going through the pattern matching game, and I just couldn't figure out what these numbers were.

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