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When people talk about the "Microsoft Effect," they usually mean the impact on the Puget Sound economy of all the employees' and former employees' stock-options millions on the local economy. But there's another Microsoft Effect that may be even more powerful: the new businesses and nonprofits formed by Microsoft alumni, and the guidance other alumni give to those enterprises.
After they leave the mother ship, alumni seem to fan out around the globe. They serve in government (State Sen. Ross Hunter and Amr Salem, a Syrian cabinet minister until early 2007) and on major corporate boards (Charlotte Guyman at Berkshire Hathaway; Maggie Wilderotter at Yahoo! and Xerox).
But what they do most often is start businesses, everywhere from San Francisco to Nigeria, and many of them are headquartered in the Seattle area. Venture capitalist Tony Audino, founder and director of the Microsoft Alumni Network, estimates 7,000 of the software behemoth's 60,000 employees depart annually. He also estimates that roughly 40 percent of the Network's 10,000 members have started businesses.
A search for where former Microsoft executives are now shows that lots of ex-Microsofties start businesses with help from ... other alumni. They fund each others' companies, donate to each others' charities, serve on each others' boards, and buy and start enterprises together.
Begin with almost any start-up where the CEO is a former Microsoft employee, scrutinize his or her bio and the bios of the company's board and management team, and you can pull the thread from there. Often, the trail leads to local nonprofits, venture capital firms, other Puget Sound companies, and back again. We could easily fill pages with these connections -- Ignition Partners alone has eight former Microsoft execs who are partners. But it's not a conspiracy to dominate the local business scene ... or is it?
Below we chart just a few of the interesting interconnections between Microsoft alumni in their current post-Microsoft lives.
Carol Tice is a freelance journalist based on Bainbridge Island
