‘Eat your own dog food': How Microsoft popularized one of the yuckiest terms in tech history

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6 days ago

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'Eat your own dog food' — the practice of companies using their own products internally before releasing them to customers — was once a widely used phrase in the tech industry. But did you know that it emerged from Microsoft in the 1980s?
Thanks to former Microsoft executive and veteran tech leader Paul Maritz, speaking on a recent episode of TiE Seattle's Startup to Exit podcast, we now have a clear origin story explaining how this phrase jumped from pet food TV ads to Microsoft mantra to tech industry staple.
Paul Maritz. (LinkedIn Photo)
Maritz explained that the phrase actually originated with Jim Harris, Microsoft's first head of OEM sales, who would lean back after presentations and ask in his booming voice, 'Yes, but will the dogs eat the dog food?' — using it as the ultimate test of whether a product would succeed.
While the source of Harris' inspiration wasn't discussed on the podcast, it's believed to come from a series of Alpo dog food commercials from the 1970s and early '80s, as former Windows and Office executive Stephen Sinofsky recalled in his book, Hardcore Software. Actor Lorne Greene famously said in the ads that he fed the product to his own dogs.
At Microsoft, the phrase took on new life during a difficult moment. The company was struggling to compete with Novell in the networking market, and Maritz had been tasked with leading the LAN Manager project — a product with no customers and little traction.
'We were nowhere in the networking business,' Maritz recalled on the podcast. Facing that reality, he sent an email to his team with a simple message: if they didn't have users, they'd need to become their own. In other words, he wrote, they were going to have to eat their own dog food.
Engineering leader Brian Valentine embraced the challenge and set up an internal server named \\dogfood — a name that stuck and helped cement the practice within Microsoft culture. Over time, 'dogfooding' became a badge of engineering integrity and accountability: if you weren't using your own software, why should anyone else?
Microsoft would eventually gain ground and surpass Novell's dominance in the networking market, thanks in part to internal efforts like dogfooding. And the phrase — once a quirky Microsoft term — spread across the tech industry in the 1990s and 2000s as a shorthand for internal testing and product confidence.
Microsoft@50 Read GeekWire's special series on the tech giant's milestone anniversary
These days, 'eating your own dog food' has largely fallen out of favor in the tech industry, replaced by gentler alternatives like 'pre-release validation' or the more appetizing 'drink your own champagne.' But the core idea remains: use what you build, and make sure it works — especially before asking others to rely on it.
Maritz became executive vice president of Microsoft's Platforms Strategy and Developer Group, essentially Microsoft's third‑ranking executive behind Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer at the time. He left Microsoft in 2000 after a 14‑year tenure, going on to become CEO of VMware, co‑founder and CEO of Pi Corp., and CEO and chairman of Pivotal Software, leading the company through its IPO in 2018.
The full episode — exploring Maritz's early experiences, leadership lessons, and pivotal moments at Microsoft — is part of the recent Microsoft@50 series on TiE Seattle's Startup to Exit podcast, with hosts Shirish Nadkarni and Gowri Shankar. I've been catching up on the series over the past few days, and really enjoying it.