Bill Gates

1. William Henry Gates III (Bill) was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington. Bill was the second of three children in an upper middle class family. He enjoyed playing games with the family and was very competitive. He also loved to read. Bill became bored in public school so his family sent him to Lakeside School, a private school, where he excelled in math and science and did well in drama and English.Gates became interested in computer .....

Synopsis

2. Born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington, famed entrepreneur Bill Gates began to show an interest in computer programming at age 13. Through technological innovation, keen business strategy and aggressive business tactics, he and partner Paul Allen built the worlds largest software business, Microsoft. In the process, Gates became one of the richest men in the world. In February 2014, Gates announced that he was stepping down as Microsoft .....

Early Life

3. Bill Gates was born William Henry Gates III on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington. Gates began to show an interest in computer programming at the age of 13 at the Lakeside School. He pursued his passion through college. Striking out on his own with his friend and business partner Paul Allen, Gates found himself at the right place at the right time. Through technological innovation, keen business strategy and aggressive business tactics, he .....

Early Career

4. Gates enrolled at Harvard University in the fall, originally thinking of a career in law. But his freshman year saw him spend more of his time in the computer lab than in class. Gates did not really have a study regimen. Instead, he could get by on a few hours of sleep, cram for a test, and pass with a reasonable grade.Gates remained in contact with Paul Allen, who, after attending Washington State University for two years, dropped out and moved .....

The Rise of Microsoft

5. Gatess acumen for not only software development but also business operations put him in the position of leading the company and working as its spokesperson. He personally reviewed every line of code the company shipped, often rewriting code when he saw it necessary. As the computer industry began to grow with companies like Apple, Intel, and IBM developing hardware and components, Bill was continuously out on the road touting the merits of Micros .....

The Invention of Microsoft Windows

6. Though their rivalry is legend, Microsoft and Apple shared many of their early innovations. In 1981 Apple invited Microsoft to help develop software for Macintosh computers. Some developers were involved in both Microsoft develeopment, and the development of Microsoft applications for Macintosh. The collaboration could be seen in some shared names between the Microsoft and Macintosh systems.It was through this knowledge sharing that Microsoft was .....

Personal Life

7. In 1989, a 28 year old Microsoft executive named Melinda French caught the eye of Bill Gates, then 37. The very bright and organized Melinda was a perfect match for Gates. In time, their relationship grew as they discovered an intimate and intellectual connection. On January 1, 1994, Melinda and Bill were married in Hawaii. But only a few months later heartbreak struck Bill Gates as his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She died in June 19 .....

Philanthropic Efforts

8. With wife Melindas influence, Gates took an interest in filling his mothers role as a civic leader. He began to realize that he had an obligation to give more of his wealth to charity. Being the consummate student he was, Gates studied the philanthropic work of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, titans of the American industrial revolution. In 1994, Gates and his wife established the William H. Gates Foundation which was dedicated to suppor .....

Dead Giveaway

9. As a child, Bill Gates two favorite games were Risk (where the object is world domination) and Monopoly.Microsofts Other Billionaire Bill Gates has become the singular face of Microsoft, but the company wouldnt be what it is today without Paul Allen. It was Allen who primarily wrote Microsofts first program, and according to Microsoft veterans, he championed the companys biggest successes, including MS DOS, Windows and Microsoft Word. But Allen r .....

Co founder of Microsoft Corp Founded 1975

10. Ultimately, the PC will be a window to everything people are interested in and everything we need to know. Bill GatesSome see him as an innovative visionary who sparked a computer revolution. Others see him as a modern day robber baron whose predatory practices have stifled competition in the software industry. Regardless of what his supporters and detractors may think, few can argue that Bill Gates is one of, if not the most successful entrepren .....

A precocious pioneer

11. Gates grew up in a prosperous area of Seattle, Washington, with his parents and two sisters. The son of a lawyer and a schoolteacher, Gates attended a public grade school and then the Lakeside School, a private college preparatory institution. It was at Lakeside that he first became interested in the relatively new field of computer programming, met his friend and future business partner Paul Allen, and developed his first computer software progr .....

Right place right time

12. Although Gates rightfully earned credit for building one of the fastest growing and most profitable companies ever established, Microsoft started out on a shaky foundation. Gates and Allen had sold their first commercially developed software for $3,000 and royalties. Before long, however, Microsoft found itself unable to cover its overhead. Even though Gates and Allen received royalties, their software was also pirated by computer hackers. This p .....

Marketing trumps challengers

13. Paul Allen, who had been serving as Microsofts head of research and new product development, left the company in 1982 after being diagnosed with Hodgkins disease. The following year, Gates faced a major challenge to Microsofts domination of operating systems for home computers when a company called VisiCorp developed a mouse driven computer system with a user interface based on graphics rather than the keyboard based and text driven system of MS .....

Gates switches gears

14. Industry analysts had praised Gates for guiding his company on a path of growth that saw its revenue stream increasing by more than 50 percent per year in a extremely competitive, even cutthroat, market. They credited much of this success to Gatess ability to capitalize early and effectively on industry trends and his willingness to take risks on such fledgling technologies as Microsofts CD ROM based software packages, which became industry stand .....

Showdown with the government

15. Microsoft earned $19.75 billion in revenue during the fiscal year 1999. Bill Gates had become an icon not only in the computer and business worlds but also in the eyes of the general public. His ghostwritten book The Road Ahead, which outlined his vision of the future, topped many best seller lists for more than three months. In spite of Gatess financial and literary success, however, he found himself facing his biggest challenge yet as the 1990s .....

Management style workaholic

16. Although Gates was long known as a boy wonder in the computer and business worlds, his management style was anything but immature. As was noted in a BBC News article, Gates has come to be known for his aggressive business tactics and confrontational style of management (January 26, 2004). Although he was considered a charismatic leader within his own company, he was also extremely tough he fired Microsofts first company president after only 11 mo .....

No time to rest

17. Gates was still the worlds wealthiest person in early 2004, with a personal fortune estimated at $60.56 billion. He remained a hands on leader at Microsoft, however, maintaining an active work schedule as the companys chairman and chief software architect. As noted by Ron Anderson in Network Computer, .....

Appearance in ads

18. Gates appeared in a series of ads to promote Microsoft in 2008. The first commercial, co starring Jerry Seinfeld, is a 90 second talk between strangers as Seinfeld walks up on a discount shoe store (Shoe Circus) in a mall and notices Gates buying shoes inside. The salesman is trying to sell Mr. Gates shoes that are a size too big. As Gates is buying the shoes, he holds up his discount card, which uses a slightly altered version of his own mugshot .....

Bill melinda gates foundation

19. Gates studied the work of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, and in 1994 sold some of his Microsoft stock to create the William H. Gates Foundation. In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three family foundations to create the charitable Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which was identified by the Funds for NGOs company in 2013 as the worlds wealthiest charitable foundation, with assets reportedly valued at more than US$34.6 billion. The Foun .....

Criticism

20. The foundation has been criticized by the Los Angeles Times for investing its assets in companies that have been accused of worsening poverty, polluting heavily, and pharmaceutical companies that do not sell into the developing world. In response to press criticism, the foundation announced in 2007 a review of its investments, to assess social responsibility. It subsequently canceled the review and stood by its policy of investing for maximum ret .....

Early experience

21. Gatess early experiences with computers included debugging (eliminating errors from) programs for the Computer Center Corporations PDP 10, helping to computerize electric power grids for the Bonneville Power Administration, and founding with Allen a firm called Traf O Data while still in high school. Their small company earned them twenty thousand dollars in fees for analyzing local traffic patterns.While working with the Computer Centers PDP 10 .....

The future for microsoft

22. Many criticize Gates not just for his success, but because they feel he tries to unfairly and maybe even illegally dominate the market. As a result of Microsofts market control, the U.S. Department of Justice brought an antitrust lawsuit (a lawsuit that is the result of a company being accused of using unfair business practices) against the company in 1998, saying the company had an illegal stronghold on the software industry.Gates maintained Mic .....

Gates as philanthropist

23. Aside from being the most famous businessman of the late 1990s, Gates also has distinguished himself as a philanthropist (someone working for charity). He and wife Melinda established the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which focuses on helping to improve health care and education for children around the world. The foundation has donated $4 billion since its start in 1996. Recent pledges include $1 billion over twenty years to fund college scho .....

College

24. After graduating from high school in 1973, Gates attended Harvard University. At first he planned to study as a lawyer, but he continued to spend much of his time on computers. He also kept in touch with his friend Paul Allen who was working for Honeywell.When the Altair personal computer came out in 1974, Gates and Allen decided they could write a BASIC software program to run on the computer. They called up Altair and told them they were workin .....

Windows

25. In 1985, Gates and Microsoft took another risk. They released the Microsoft Windows operating system. This was Microsofts answer to a similar operating system introduced by Apple in 1984. At first, many people complained that Microsoft Windows wasnt as good as the Apple version. However, Gates continued to press the open PC concept. Microsoft Windows could run on a variety of PC compatible machines, while the Apple operating system only ran on Ap .....

Why was bill gates successful

26. Like most successful entrepreneurs, Bill Gates success came from a combination of hard work, intelligence, timing, business sense, and luck. Gates constantly challenged his employees to work harder and innovate, but he also worked as hard or harder than the people who worked for him. Gates also wasnt afraid to take risks. He took a risk when he dropped out of Harvard to start his own company. He also took a risk when he changed Microsofts operati .....