>>>The example of Bill Gates in particular is instructive. Microsoft made it from a fledgling “garage” type of operation, all the way to one of the most profitable companies in the history of the planet, all in the last 25 or 30 years. A single lifetime.
I don't like that example.
Gates didn't even "create" Microsoft. He bought QDOS from Tim Patterson of Seattle Computer Products' and renamed it MS-DOS, then shipped it to IBM.
Bill Gates is to Microsoft as Al Gore is to the Internet
Gates did not create MS-Dos, but that doesn't mean he didn't create Microsoft. Even before the invention of the IBM PC, Microsoft had produced a number of products, most notably the Basic interpreter found in many early microcomputers.
Further, I think it should be noted that DOS very quickly shed its QDOS roots. Although DOS 2.0 retained support for QDOS-style FCBs, it introduced a new set of system calls that used file handles instead; I don't know that any new software has been written to use the old-style FCBs in the last twenty years.