Bill Gates

Most Successful Entrepreneur Of 20th Century

About Bill Gates
William Henry "Bill" Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate,
philanthropist, and chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen. He
is consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people. During his career at Microsoft, Gates
held the positions of CEO and chief software architect. He has also authored or co-authored
several books.
Early Days
Gates was born in Seattle, Washington, to William H. Gates, Sr. and Mary Maxwell Gates, of
English, German, and Scotch-Irish descent. His family was upper middle class; his father was a
prominent lawyer, his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem
and the United Way.
Childhood
Gates has one elder sister, Kristi (Kristianne), and one younger sister, Libby. He was the fourth of
his name in his family. Early on in his life, Gates' parents had a law career in mind for him.
Schooling
He was enrolled at Lakeside school in 13.
His school has purchased a computer terminal and a block of time of computers of General
Electric.
Gates started taking interest in programming.
Prodigy
He wrote his first computer program on Tic-Tac-Toe. Gates was fascinated by the machine and
how it would always execute software code perfectly. When he reflected back on that moment,
he commented on it and said, "There was just something neat about the machine."
Notorious Computer Geek
Since programming was in his blood, he along with his four friends were banned by Computer
Center Corporation for exploiting bugs in the system so that they can get more time with
computers. After the ban for students were offered to work in CCC. Later they were hired by
Information Sciences Inc. to write a program in COBOL.
A Genius
The Company soon realized his capabilities of programming, he was offered to write school's
computer program to schedule students in classes. He deliberately modified the code so that he
was placed in classes with mostly female students. He later stated that It was hard to tear
myself away from a machine at which I could so unambiguously demonstrate success.
College Pals
Gates graduated from Lakeside School in 1973. He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT and
enrolled at Harvard College in the autumn of 1973. While at Harvard, he met Steve Ballmer, who
later succeeded Gates as CEO of Microsoft. He did not have a definite study plan while a student
at Harvard and spent a lot of time using the school's computers.

Incomplete Graduation
In 1974, MITS Altair 8800 Computer came into market. Gates and Allen had sought this event
as their opportunity to start their business of developing system emulators. He proposed the
company to show their demonstration in BASIC language. As a consequence of successful
demonstration they got an opportunity to develop the emulator. Paul Allen was hired by the
company. While Gates took a leave from college to complete the project and never returned to
Harvard.
Launching A Revolution: Starting Of
MICROSOFT
Soon after developing the emulator of Altair 8800 and when Gates drop out the college, they
bind into a partnership and name their firm as Micro-soft. and had their first office located in
Albuquerque. Within a year, the hyphen was dropped, and on November 26, 1976, the trade
name "Microsoft" was registered with the Office of the Secretary of the State of New Mexico.
IBM Partnership
In 1980, IBM approached Gates to develop a BASIC interpreter for their PC, but Gates referred
them to SCP. IBM representatives requested Gates for developing the OS as they got problems in
licensing from SCP. A few weeks later Gates proposed using 86-DOS(QDOS), an operating system
similar to CP/M SCP.
A Witty Decision
Gates did not offer to transfer the copyright on the operating system, because he believed
that other hardware vendors would clone IBM's system . They did, and the sales of MS-DOS
made Microsoft a major player in the industry.
Emerging Of Windows
Microsoft launched its first retail version of Microsoft Windows on November 20, 1985 and made
an agreement with IBM PCs. As the time progressed, Microsoft developed a pool of Software
Engineers and released different versions of widows till date.
Keys to Gates Success
Stick to your vision
Develop an A-team
Think Long Term
Make a strong recovery
Never Stop Learning
Vision
In order to remain well focused while running a company one requires to have a Vision and a
Mission. When Bill Gates was asked by Fortune to explain the astounding success of his
brainchild, Microsoft, his immediate response was, Our vision, which has not changed since the
day the company was founded.
Team Work!!!
At Microsoft, there are lots of brilliant ideas, but the image is that they all come from the top,
says Gates. Im afraid thats not quite right.
While Gates has been the famous face of Microsoft for over thirty years, it took the help of
numerous other trusted individuals to help realize the companys success

Long Term
Thinking
We werent trying to just go public and get rich, recalls Gates of his early Microsoft days.
There was no near-term thing. It always was this many-decades thing where there were no
shortcuts and wed sort of put one foot in front of the other.
Never Stop Learning!!!
Every now and then I like to pick up a copy of Time magazine and read every article from
beginning to end, not just the articles that interest me most, says Gates. That way you can be
certain to learn something you didnt know previously.
His Management Styles
Labor intensive company
Invests a lot on R&D
His aim is to make every thing on top
He emphasizes more on product simplification
Aggressive & Robust Marketing strategies
Entrepreneurial Traits
Gates Believe in:
Taking personal responsibility
Setting high benchmarks
Rewarding skilled professionals
Asserting his authority on major decisions
Achievements