I've been listening good for a long time. Great great i'm just. I'm delighted beyond words to be on this podcast. Well let me say that new Consider ourselves recording. Let me say that you are the first person that i brought the show back for about a year and a half. I've always said that if somebody approached me. That was interesting enough. And you've been enrolled you've had a finger in every so you definitely qualified so thanks for coming on the show. Yeah you back. yeah Where you're coming to promote a book. I'm gonna. I'm gonna mention that right now. But then we'll circle back through the at the end it's called from startup to exit an insider's guide to launching and scaling your business. I highly recommend it. And i'm going to tell you why at the end But cherise. Let's let's start with the fact that you joined microsoft in nineteen eighty seven Which is one year after the microsoft. Ipo this is way before the web This is way before windows. Were microsoft is basically an ms daas company. So how old are you when you join. And and you know what was microsoft like in nineteen eighty seven. Yeah so. I was twenty six when i joined Microsoft i was stressed out of the business school at that point and microsoft probably had about a thousand employees at that point circles still a small company And what was incredible. was that As a young graduate. I was given the responsibility of chronic managing The microsoft entry into the email space and this was a time when email did not really exist The member boeing yet in seattle. Was one of them. And they were using a mainframe system called ibm profs. Many probably never heard of ibm props. And i remember going to meet with the buoying to see what the requirements were And was quite daunting Because you know they they. They thought a pc based email solution. I mean the way that could scale up to our needs of you know hundred thousand employees so it was an exciting time to be at microsoft because you have given this responsibility at a young aids dude really manage the entry of microsoft and do a whole new category and i think we should share a little bit of context here again. This is nineteen eighty seven. The web doesn't really smart. Take off till ninety. Three ninety four So when we're talking about email in nineteen eighty seven we're talking about largely internet's largely corporate male systems. And things like that. This is not getting your mom a hotmail account yet. This is something entirely different. This is this is very much an enterprise thing right. Yes definitely and again. It was being accompanied using you. Know systems like ibm offset deck All in one etc out. Say that one of the challenges we had was that a lot of companies didn't even local area networks You know to run email software so be that only themselves how e mail was being adopted by corporations but it was clear you know at that time we had an internal system called cenex mail that people using microsoft and it was Clear that email was lifeblood of the company and that it was only a matter of time before email would get popular among all kinds of companies of all kinds of sizes. So you're involved in the launch of microsoft mail There's a bunch of acquisitions that go into to making that product. But i think like the was was the big product there the microsoft mail for pc networks. That comes in ninety. One gus right yes yeah Launched on the macintosh called microsoft mail applebrook networks and then launch stubby body company called network career out of canada and that became sawmill folksy networks. And then we started working on what became ultimately max off exchange server which launched in more like i think in ninety five nine the again for context like you know Macintosh apple was very big on networking at the time Sooner than other people as as a way to try to differentiate themselves the At any it's microsoft mail for pc network so when that launch was that a windows product at that point because at this.