Before Microsoft, Bill Gates founded this tech company

Bill Gates

Microsoft has turned 50. The company that gave us Windows, Office, and Xbox has shaped the way we live and work for decades. But long before it became the tech giant we know today, Bill Gates and Paul Allen were just two high school students in Seattle with big dreams and even bigger curiosity. Their first real tech venture was not Microsoft, it was in fact a small company called Traf-O-Data.

Back in the early 1970s, Gates and Allen came up with the idea to build a computer that could read and process traffic data for local governments. It was the beginning of something huge.

They weren’t alone. The duo roped in Paul Gilbert, a University of Washington engineering student who they met while sneaking into the university’s computer labs at night. “Can you build us a microcomputer?” they asked. Gilbert said yes—and just like that, the team was formed.

Together, they built a machine using the first 8-bit microprocessor in Seattle. Gates and Allen wrote the software, and Gilbert handled the hardware. It was scrappy, it was geeky, and it was kind of a flop.

Traf-O-Data never took off. Just as the business was gaining traction, the government started offering free traffic data services. Their business model vanished overnight.

But in hindsight, Traf-O-Data was far from a failure. It taught the trio how to work with microprocessors, write efficient code, and collaborate as a team. Paul Allen once said that if it hadn’t been for Traf-O-Data, Microsoft might never have happened.

Gilbert, now retired and living in Florida, still remembers those early days vividly. “Bill was hyper, impatient. Paul was calm and easygoing,” he said during an interview. “I never imagined they’d become billionaires.”

And yet, they did—changing the face of technology forever. It all started with a traffic counter, a clunky computer, and a couple of teenagers who weren’t afraid to dream big.