The Business Story of Bill Gates
Introduction
Bill Gates is a renowned entrepreneur, investor, programmer, and philanthropist, who hails from the United States. Gates, alongside Paul Allen co-founded the world’s most successful software firm: Microsoft. In 2015, the company recorded $110.4 billion in revenue. As of May 2022, Bill Gates has a net worth of $131.9 billion, making him the fourth richest person in the planet. He served as Microsoft’s CEO from January 2000 until his resignation in 2022, and he now serves as the technology adviser to the CEO, Satya Nadella. In order to pay more attention to philanthropy, he chose a less demanding position at Microsoft so that he may devote more time to his foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Bill Gate’s Early Life and Career
Bill Gates was born on the 28th of October 1955 in Seattle, Washington. His parents are William H. Gates Sr. and Mary Maxwell Gates. He has two sisters: Kristi Gates (older sister) and Libby Gates (younger sister). He began attending Lakeside School, a private preparatory school, when he was just 13 years old. During his time at the school, he developed a passion for coding the General Electric system in BASIC and was granted absence from classes to explore it.
On a General Electric computer, he wrote his first ever program. Paul Allen and Bill Gates worked together to uncover flaws in the PDP-10 system owned by Computer Center Corporation while they were students at the school. In exchange for royalties and computer time, Gates, Paul, and two other students built a payroll application for Information Sciences. After his school became aware of his programming abilities, he developed a scheduling application for students in the classroom.
When he was just 17 years old, Gates and Paul founded Traf-O-Data, a company that manufactured traffic counters largely dependent on Intel 8008 CPUs. In 1973, he graduated from Lakeside School, where he was a National Merit Scholar with an SAT score of 1590 over 1600. In the fall of 1973, he entered into Harvard College, where he happened to meet Steve Ballmer. In 1974, he began working with Paul Allen at Honeywell. Intel’s 8080 CPU provided the basis for the MITS Altair 8800 computer, which was introduced in 1975. Seeing this as an opportunity, Bill and Paul decided to create their own software firm.
The Birth of Microsoft
After reading an article in Popular Electronics in January 1975, Bill Gates contacted MITS, the makers of the Altair 8800 microcomputer, to alert them that he and others were collaborating on a BASIC interpreter for the system. Gates and Allen had no written code, but they wanted to see if MITS was interested. They visited the MITS president and within a few weeks they had produced an Altair emulator for a minicomputer and the BASIC interpreter to demonstration on a minicomputer. After a successful presentation, MITS agreed to offer the interpreter under the Altair BASIC brand. Gates requested a leave of absence from Harvard in November 1975 to work with Paul Allen who was also hired at MITS. Their partnership was called Micro-Soft. The hyphen was removed a year later, and on November 26, 1976, Microsoft was registered as a trademark.
For the new IBM PC, IBM asked Microsoft to create a BASIC interpreter. Because they needed an operating system, Gates suggested they contact Digital Research, but things didn’t work out. After the conversations, IBM executives spoke with Gates, who advocated using 86-DOS, an operating system identical to PC hardware owned by SCP. In an arrangement with SCP, Microsoft became the exclusive licensee of 86-DOS and later the sole proprietor of the software. For $50,000, Microsoft provided IBM with PC DOS, a reworked version of its operating system for the PC.
Microsoft became a prominent player in the computer business following the success of MS-DOS. Press rapidly identified Microsoft as a major influence on the new computer, even though IBM’s name was on the operating system. An industry expert referred to the computer as a “Gates computer.” On the June 25, 1981, the firm was reformed, with Gates taking over as president and board chair.
MS Windows was released on November 20, 1985, and a contract was signed with IBM to produce OS/2, a distinct operating system. However, due to creative differences, IBM and Microsoft were unable to sustain their partnership after producing the 1st version of the new system.
Since that time, Microsoft has continued to expand its reach and influence around the world. To begin with, there was the Windows operating system; then there was Microsoft Office Suites; Office 365; Xbox, Hotmail, Bing, and so on. It all started with the original idea, which they then expanded upon.
Microsoft has dominated the software industry since 1975, and Windows remains the operating system of choice for the vast majority of businesses. It is because they have constantly kept pace with change that they continue to rank as the world’s number one software firm.
Philanthropy
In 1994, Bill Gates sold some of his Microsoft stock to launch his philanthropic foundation, the William H. Gates Foundation. His decision was influenced by Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller’s exploits. After converging three family foundations, he formed the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with his wife in 2000. The foundation has assets valued at more than $34.6 billion. Bill and Melinda Gates were named the 2nd most generous philanthropists in the United States in 2007, donating nearly $28 billion to charitable causes.
Final thoughts
We hope you are inspired by his story and you realize that nothing is beyond your reach. Take Bill Gates for what he truly is: a man who has worked very hard and smart to become who he is today. Having the proper mentality, tools, team, vision, resourcefulness and entrepreneurial spirit can lead you to great success. We wish you the bravery to begin your adventure and the perseverance to see it through to the end.
