When you think of Microsoft, your brain probably goes straight to the rainy, evergreen outskirts of Seattle. You think of the sprawling Redmond campus, the glass buildings, and the Pacific Northwest tech boom. But if you want to know where was Microsoft started, you actually have to look about 1,400 miles south.
It wasn't Washington. It was Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Seriously.
In 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen weren't tech titans. They were just two guys obsessed with a specific machine called the Altair 8800. This machine was the spark. It was built by a company called MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), which was based in a strip mall in Albuquerque. Because MITS was there, Microsoft had to be there too.
The motel room that changed everything
The birth of the company wasn't in some high-tech lab. It was largely in a room at the Sundowner Motel on Central Avenue. If you drove past it today, you might not even blink. But back then, Gates and Allen were pulling all-nighters, fueled by junk food and a singular vision: putting a computer on every desk and in every home.
They didn't even have a formal office at first.
They were basically crashing in Albuquerque because that's where their only customer lived. Ed Roberts, the man who ran MITS, had created the Altair 8800, and he needed a language to make it useful. Gates and Allen wrote a version of BASIC for it. When the software worked, they moved to New Mexico to be close to the hardware.
It’s kinda wild to imagine now. The richest company in the world started in a dusty city known more for Route 66 and green chile than software engineering. They officially registered the name "Microsoft" (originally hyphenated as Micro-Soft) with the New Mexico Secretary of State in 1976.
Why Albuquerque wasn't a permanent home
You might wonder why they left if that's where the magic happened. Honestly? Recruitment was a nightmare.
In the late 70s, trying to convince top-tier programmers to move to the high desert was a tough sell. Seattle had a better talent pool and, frankly, it was home for both Gates and Allen. By 1979, the duo decided to pack up the operation and move back to Bellevue, Washington.
The move was small. We’re talking about maybe a dozen employees. But that transition marked the end of the "scrappy startup" phase and the beginning of the global empire.
The MITS connection and the Altair 8800
To understand where was Microsoft started, you have to understand the Altair. This wasn't a computer like we have today. It had no keyboard. It had no monitor. It was a box with switches and flashing lights.
Paul Allen saw the Altair on the cover of Popular Electronics magazine while walking through Harvard Square. He ran to show Gates. They realized that if someone didn't write software for these new "micro-computers," the hardware would be useless.
They lied to Ed Roberts.
They told him they had already written a BASIC interpreter for the Altair. In reality, they hadn't written a single line of code. They spent the next eight weeks frantically coding in a Harvard lab. When Allen flew to Albuquerque to demo it, he wasn't even sure it would boot up. It did. And that’s the exact moment Microsoft became a real business.
Life in the New Mexico era
The Albuquerque years were chaotic. Bill Gates notoriously got a bunch of speeding tickets in the desert. There’s a famous mugshot of him from 1977—floral shirt, huge glasses, goofy grin—that came from an arrest in Albuquerque.
The team worked out of a small office building at 819 Two Park Central Tower. It wasn't glamorous. They were young, brash, and incredibly focused. Steve Ballmer hadn't even joined yet; he came along later during the Washington years.
Many people get this wrong. They assume the IBM PC deal in 1980 was the "start." While that deal made them famous, the foundation of how Microsoft operated—licensing software instead of selling hardware—was a strategy born in New Mexico.
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The legacy left behind
If you visit Albuquerque today, there’s a small plaque near the site of the original MITS office. It’s humble. It doesn't scream "global headquarters."
But the DNA of the company is there. The Albuquerque years taught Gates and Allen how to defend their intellectual property (look up Gates’ "Open Letter to Hobbyists" from 1976) and how to scale a product rapidly.
Actionable Insights for Tech History Enthusiasts
If you're looking to dive deeper into the roots of the personal computer revolution, don't just look at the Silicon Valley narrative. The "Silicon Desert" phase of Microsoft provides the real blueprint for the software industry.
- Visit the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science: They have a permanent exhibit called "Startup: Albuquerque and the Personal Computer Revolution." It’s the best place to see an original Altair 8800 and early Microsoft artifacts.
- Trace the Route 66 Connection: Much of the early Microsoft "campus" (if you can call it that) was centered around the historic Route 66 corridor in Albuquerque.
- Study the MITS/Microsoft Contract: Understanding how Gates and Allen retained the rights to their software while working with MITS is a masterclass in business strategy. It’s the reason Microsoft became a monopoly while MITS eventually faded away.
- Look for the 1978 Staff Photo: There is a famous photo of the original 11 Microsoft employees taken just before the move to Washington. Most are wearing 70s sweaters and looking slightly unkempt. It’s a perfect snapshot of the company’s Albuquerque identity.
The move to Washington in 1979 was the right business move, but the soul of the company—the "Move fast and break things" energy—started in the New Mexico sun. Knowing where was Microsoft started helps clarify that the tech industry wasn't always a polished, corporate machine. It was a couple of college dropouts in a desert motel trying to make a box of lights do something useful.