Charles Fitzgerald is a Seattle-based angel investor with more than three decades of experience in tech who’s the managing director at Platformonomics, a consultancy that helps early-stage tech startups succeed. Prior to this position, Charles worked as a platform consiglieri at VMware and a VP of product management at Mozy. He also did a 19-year stint at Microsoft, where he ended up as general manager of platform strategy, and has served on the board of several tech startups, including buuteeq, Shippable, and Rec Room.

Join Corey and Charles as they discuss what Charles worked on during his 19 years at Microsoft, including 16-bit Windows, 32-bit Windows, OLE, ActiveX, and .NET; what Charles invests in these days; how the big cloud players are so big that you’d struggle to catch them if someone gave you $100 billion; the three arguments IBM people made to Charles after he predicted they wouldn’t have a successful cloud transition in 2013; why Charles expects there to be more niche cloud offerings in the future; why no one will challenge the hyperscale cloud providers; how the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the deglobalization trend; and more.