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BILL GATES: LEGEND
IN HIS LIFETIME
HE IS THE WORLD’S WEALTHIEST AND MOST ADMIRED
ENTREPRENEUR. JUST AS HE REWROTE THE HISTORY
OF SOFTWARE, BILL GATES IS NOW REWRITING THE
RULES OF PHILANTHROPY.
A software competitor once described Bill
Gates as one part Albert Einstein, one part
John McEnroe and one part General Patton.
Iconic, visionary, brilliant, Gates has shaped
America’s information technology revolution since the
early-1980s. Gates is the richest individual in the world
with Forbes placing his current net worth at over $56 billion.
Gates has changed the way the world works and communicates.
The standards he has set have been novel at
every level – enterprise, industry, society and the world.
Judged on those criteria, Gates is possibly the greatest
business innovator of the post-war period. Microsoft may
not have quite the cachet in 2008 as it did in the 1980s
and 1990s, but the Seattle-based firm paved the way for
the Internet revolution. Without Microsoft’s slew of intricately-
coded software products, several applications we
take for granted today – from search engines to web 2.0
interactivity – would have taken far longer to develop.
Gates’ determination, ambition and entrepreneurial skill
laid the platform for today’s wired world.
TOP GUN
Bill Gates’ father, William H. Gates, was a successful lawyer.
His mother, Mary Maxwell Gates, was on the board
of First Interstate Bank and the United Way. Recognizing
their son’s exceptional cognitive abilities, they enrolled
him at Lakeside, an academically rigorous private school
for advanced, gifted students. It was here that young Gates
discovered the world of computers. He also met Paul
Allen who would co-found Microsoft with him.
In those heady days of the late-1960s, Gates formed
the Lakeside Programming Group along with a handful
of fellow computer buffs. He struck his very first deal
with the Computer Center Corporation. In return for finding
bugs and exposing weaknesses in the corporation’s
computer system, Gates and his group were allowed unlimited
computer time. As Gates later recounted: “It was
when we got free time at C-cubed (Computer Center
Corporation) that we really got into computers. I mean,
then I became hardcore. It was day and night.”
The world of computers seemed to have been created
for the Lakeside Programming Group to conquer. Gates
and Allen’s first projects included writing a payroll program
in COBOL for Information Sciences Inc., producing
a small computer for measuring traffic flow based on the
Intel 8008 processor (the company they started for the
purpose, Traf-O-Data, closed when Gates left for Harvard
University) and fixing bugs for defense contractor TRW.
 Gates secured admission to Harvard in 1973, enrolling
in pre-law merely because he could think of nothing better
– or worse. Though Allen continuously tried to seduce
him away from academia with the idea of starting a software
company, the duo’s entrepreneurial epiphany came
about only in December 1974. Allen picked up a copy of
Popular Electronics with the title “World’s First Microcomputer
Kit to Rival Commercial Models”, and a picture
of the Altair 8080. It was the moment the two Harvard
undergrads had been waiting for. The home computer
market was about to explode (though few knew that then)
and they wanted to be on the front lines, making software
that would run the new machines. Gates and Allen immediately
recognized the potential of the microprocessor
to revolutionize computing. “I think it’s fair to say that
personal computers have become the most empowering
tool we’ve ever created. They’re tools of communication,
they’re tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their
user,” Gates was to observe later.
Employing the audacity that would become his hallmark,
Gates called Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry
Systems (MITS), the creators of Altair 8800, considered
the world’s first personal computer. Gates offered the com-
pany a BASIC interpreter for the software platform.
BASIC had been invented by John Kemeny and Thomas
Kutrz in 1964. Even though not a line of code had been
written as yet, Gates and Allen developed, in time for
the presentation to MITS, an Altair emulator that ran
on a microcomputer and then the BASIC interpreter. Impressed,
MITS agreed to buy the rights for BASIC. It was
a program that won immediate popularity with hobbyists.
Gates dropped out of Harvard without his degree (he
eventually received an honorary doctorate from the university
in June 2007) and along with Allen founded
Microsoft. It was a bold move. Computers were still being
dismissed as mere toys for hobbyists. Microsoft moved to
Seattle in 1976. The stage was set.
THE BIG LEAGUE
 In 1980, Microsoft got its taste of the big time. IBM hired
the fledgling firm to build its first operating system. Gates
displayed daring entrepreneurship and ruthless negotiating
skill by buying Q-DOS from Seattle Computer
Products, restructuring it for personal computers and delivering
it to IBM as PC-DOS in exchange for a one-time
fee. It was Microsoft’s initial, tentative step towards defining
the software standard of the personal computer
industry.
In a contractual masterstroke, Gates negotiated permission
for Microsoft to license the operating system to
other manufacturers. An entire industry of IBM-compatible
personal computers, which depended solely on
Microsoft’s operating system, was thus created. MS-DOS
soon ran on 90 percent of the world’s IBM and IBMclone
computers. It was a breathtaking coup for Gates.
IBM had surrendered control in perpetuity of the world’s
personal computing software standard to Microsoft. The
financial consequences to both companies would be significant.
For Microsoft, the MS-DOS deal with IBM
would in a decade make it the world’s most valuable firm.
For IBM, it would lead, two decades later, to the sale of
its entire computer hardware division to China’s Lenovo.
In 1986, Microsoft went public, raising $61 million. There
was no looking back.
Though MS-DOS became the world software standard
for personal computing, its success paled besides the
launch of Microsoft Windows 3.0 in May 1990 – a graphics
interface environment that ran on top of MS-DOS.
Microsoft was soon supplying 50 percent of the world’s
software applications through programs such as Excel,
Microsoft Word, Outlook and Access. Gates’ vision for
networked computers
was central to
Microsoft’s success.
It was a vision that
extended to multimedia,
CD-ROMs and
books. “Microsoft has
had its success by doing
low-cost products and constantly
improving those products
and we’ve really redefined
the IT industry to be something
that’s about a tool for individuals,”
said Gates.
 Over the years, Gates has come to
be both revered and reviled for his aggressive
business tactics and confrontational
style of management. And Gates has not always
got it right. He is said to have misjudged the scale and
potential of the Internet. Even though the world wide
web emerged in the early-1990s, it was only in 1996 that
Microsoft launched its first browser, Internet
Explorer 1.0, licensed from a company called
Spyglass. Despite being late off the block,
Microsoft’s browsers soon became globally
dominant.
BUILDING A MONOPOLY
Gates has also paid a price for
possible monopolistic practices.
In 2000, he lost a longrunning
federal antitrust
suit. Despite Gates’ repeated
denials that “the
hard core truth is that
we’ve done nothing wrong”,
the judge ruled that Microsoft had
committed “monopolization” and blocking of competition
in violation of the Sherman Act. United States District
Judge Thomas Jackson went so far as to accuse Gates of
a “Napoleonic concept of himself and his company, an
arrogance that derives from power and unalloyed success.”
The George W. Bush administration later decided the
case in Microsoft’s favour.
Bill Gates — Idea and Beyond |
Bill Gates is recognized as one of the best businessmen
of our time. With his development of Microsoft, Gates
impacted huge change, particularly within the realms of
business and technology.
Gates demonstrated creative initiative at an early age.
When he was 15, he started a small business in Seattle
based on software and traffic flow. He continued to pursue
his interest in software development, creating Basic 1.0.
Later he acquired DOS to make an operating system MSDOS.
With the birth of Microsoft, Gates was successful
in standardizing software for personal computers. Until
then, software resided in the community of hobbyists. Programs
were, as a tradition, openly shared among developers
due to their ease of transfer and hard-to-enforce intellectual
property laws. Gates took a “brilliant leap” by bringing
business practice into the software realm. Software
quickly gained value as complementary components to
hardware. Today 95 percent of operating systems for personal
computers are Microsoft-based.
Success, however, did not happen instantaneously. It
took many years of hard work and perseverance to generate
idea and potential of opportunity. First, there is plenty
of evidence that he had to engage creative function by
re-scripting desires, actively utilizing his internal mental
sketchpad, loosening any restraints, and employing
imagination.
Gates re-scripted desires throughout life, enabling him
to reach for higher levels of success. Even as a boy, he displayed
an above average sense of emotional independence.
He was also very competitive, a trait that continued to propel
him onward. This “white-hot intensity” did not extinguish
as his accomplishments grew. Even as a billionaire at the
age of 31, he continued to re-script and pursue higher goals.
He also made active use of his internal sketchpad. As a
child he was insatiably curious, going as far as learning the
encyclopedia cover-to-cover. He continued to exercise his
analytical ability and was soon able to quickly process
elaborate profiles of information. Gates demonstrated his
mental prowess at business meetings, constantly challenging
and provoking the group. It was said he would work though
various choices and options, as though he was using a mental
check-list.
Gates was able to loosen restraints by embracing risk in
a largely risk-adverse society. He demonstrated this not only
in his academics and work ethic, but by participating in
skiing, racing, sailing, and other adventure sports. Through
constantly living on the edge, he became more comfortable
with risk on many different levels.
Gates had to perpetually employ his commercial
imagination to keep his company ahead in the vibrant
domain of computers. Part of this ability emerged from early
experiences. He attended Lakeside High, one of the early high schools to incorporate computers in the learning
environment. Gates watched as computers, despite their
imposing size and expense, captured the attention of
students. It was a joke that while his school didn’t have a
drug problem, they were afflicted with computer addiction.
Witnessing the willingness of technological embrace helped
Gates envision future trends. He conjured images of the
future in the computer realm, and more importantly, where
he fit in to this new world.
Gates continued to be forward-thinking throughout his
career. Even when he missed a trend, he was quick to catch
on. Many innovators in software are perpetually anxious
about what Gates’ competitive response could be. Jim Clark,
founder of Netscape, worried about how Gates could eat
his lunch in the browser business. Jim had the same worries
when he founded Healtheon. Bill launched Explorer to
counter Netscape and replaced it as the dominant web
browser. Microsoft supported Web/MD in the same space
as Healtheon. But this time Jim Clark was not going to be
surpassed. He did not hesitate to merge Healtheon with
Web/MD, escaping the Netscape fate another time around.
There is little evidence of Bill Gates being deterred by
bias. This is evident in three different areas. He was an early
one to embrace the possibility of an electronic brain. He
did not shy away from calculated risks. Although he came
from an upper-class family, he was motivated to achieve his
own economic success.
Gates was successful in utilizing forces of change. He
first aligned his talents, skills and passion. His talent was
apparent at an early age when he scored an 800 on the
math section of the SAT. He further honed this talent
into skills, working in his school’s computer lab and later
on writing his own software codes. He was spurred onward
by his passions, which included software development,
competition, and wealth creation.
Microsoft democratized his software, making it
available to all its audience – from IBM to Compaq and
Sony. He enhanced it continually in new versions. He
did not hesitate in transferring ideas in the same domain.
Microsoft did not pioneer but introduced the most
dominant spreadsheet, word processor, database and web
browser software.
There is no question that Gates was hugely successful.
He lived his dreams, built an unforgettable company and
generated enormous profits. Furthermore, he was able to
achieve a wider social purpose with his work, by creating
more jobs, contributing to charity, and inspiring people
around the globe.
One of the most critical factors to his success, however,
is his recognition of the system. Gates understood
that his innovative work existed within the context of
the current macro-societal institutions. He not only values
this system, but supports it. In reference to his views
on estate tax, Gates responded: “Most of the things that
have generated the enormous advances in our economy
are things that started on some campus or in some laboratory.
Most of those are because the government financed
it.”
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In 2000, Gates – well before his fiftieth birthday –
also stepped down as Chief Executive of Microsoft to focus
on software development and the new challenges of
the mobile Internet age. “We are always saying to ourself…
we have to innovate. We got to come up with that
breakthrough,” Gates said, echoing the founding spirit
of the company. It was also at the start of the new century
that he and his wife founded the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation. The couple married in 1994 and has three
children. The Bill and Melinda Foundation has over the
years redefined corporate philanthropy, providing funds
for AIDS prevention, diseases in the Third World and
college scholarships for under-represented minorities. Impressed
by the Foundation’s work, billionaire investor
Warren Buffett has committed over 80 percent of his company
Berkshire Hathaway’s fortune to it in his bequest.
 When the history of business entrepreneurship is
written, Gates may come to be better known for giving
away his money than for making it. On June 15, 2006 he
announced that he would be disengaging himself from
Microsoft to dedicate his time to philanthropy. He plans
to walk away completely from day-to-day duties in mid-
2008 though he will remain Chairman and, as he stated
pointedly, will always see himself “as the largest shareholder
of Microsoft.”
Yet being the dyed-in-the-wool entrepreneur he is,
Gates will find it difficult to fade away. His swan song is
the recent creation of a robotics software group within
Microsoft. At the annual financial meeting of the
company in 2007, he seemed to still have his finger on
the pulse of the IT industry, describing a world where the
availability of broadband networks would reshape
computing, giving rise to “natural user interfaces” like
pen, voice and touch and replacing many functions of
the keyboard and the mouse.
Gates will be a tough act to follow. His entire career
has been redolent of innovation – from process to practice.
Microsoft’s software products have set global standards
in novelty. The firm’s R&D effort is large and effective.
Microsoft has written some of the world’s most creative,
useful software code. Gates has inspired a generation of
entrepreneurs in information technology. The sheer
versatility of Microsoft’s PC and mobile software products
influences millions of digital users worldwide – every
waking hour.
 As rock star Bono recently said of Gates, “He’s
changing the world twice. And the second act for Bill
Gates may be the one that history regards more.” Bono
together with Bill and Melinda Gates were named Time’s
Persons of the Year in 2005 for “being shrewd about being
good, for rewiring politics and re-engineering justice, for
making mercy smarter and hope strategic and then daring
the rest of us to follow.” That is the new holy grail of
global entrepreneurship and philanthropy. As usual,
Gates has set the bar high.
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