A Story About Bill Gates

Born	William Henry Gates, III in Seattle, Washington, 28/10/1955 (age 58)
Residence	Medina, Washington
Alma mater	Harvard University
Occupation	Technology Advisor of Microsoft, Co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, CEO of Cascade Investment, Chairman of Corbis
Net worth	$ 80.2 billion (second richest man in the World)

Bill Gates born in October 28, 1955 is an American business magnate, philanthropist, investor, computer programmer and inventor. The story of Bill Gates is well known, young math whiz discovers computer programming. Drops out of Harvard and starts a little computer company called Microsoft with his co-founder Paul Allen.

Through sheer brilliance and ambition and guts builds into the giant of the software world. That’s the broad outline but when we dig a little deeper we learn more about this time and again “richest man in the world”. Gates’ father was a wealthy and prominent lawyer in Seattle and his mother was the daughter of a well to do banker. Many would term Gates as being ‘set for life’ coming from a well to do background. But this did not prevent him from seeking out his own path and transforming the software world. Honestly as I type this article, I can’t picture life without Windows and more precisely without Microsoft Word!

As a child, Bill was precocious and easily bored by his studies so his parents took him out of Public school and at the beginning of the seventh grade, sent him to Lakeside, a private school in Seattle. The school later started a computer club and “The Mothers’ Club” did a rummage sale annually and some of the money ($3000) went to a computer terminal and it was an object of fascination to Gates and his peers. Lakeside was quite privileged as most colleges didn’t have computer clubs in the 1960s. The even more remarkable thing was the type of computer Lakeside bought which was a time sharing terminal with direct link to a mainframe computer in downtown Seattle.

Bill Gates got a great deal of time programming as an eighth grader in 1968 and from that moment forward Gates lived in the computer room. Another key thing we notice is that Gates had the interest and was also self-taught. He did not become a programmer overnight but it actually took time. This specially goes out to us young people who are termed as the ‘microwave generation’.

I’m sure many of us have heard about the 10,000 hour rule (practice, practice makes perfect) and by the time Gates was joining Harvard he had put in more than his fair share of 10,000 hours. After the $3000 had run out, Gates was lucky enough to get access to the computer center at the University of Washington. Bill Gates said the reason he is so generous to the University of Washington is that they let him steal so much of their computer time. That’s a key thing for us young people to learn that on our way to the top we should keep in mind the people who helped us get there.

Bill Gates got a series of opportunities such as getting sent to Lakeside and that Gates happened to live within a walking distance of University of Washington. Had he not taken advantage of them, he probably wouldn’t have made it into the leader he now is. As young people when we hear about billionaires we always wonder, “How did he do it?” Well, taking advantage of opportunities is one of them.

All the opportunities Gates got gave him extra time to practice and by the time Gates dropped out of Harvard after his sophomore year to start his software company he had been programming practically nonstop for seven consecutive years. I have had many people wanting to drop out of college say things like, “Even Bill Gates never finished college.” What they don’t realize is the kind of exposure he had and that his decision was not on a whim but a burning desire to bring something great to the world.

Bill Gates as seen through the years was quite a humble man such that despite his immense wealth he flew ‘coach’ till 1997 when he bought a private jet. Gates has several investments outside Microsoft which bring in good returns. Since Microsoft’s founding in 1975 until 2006 he had primary responsibility of the company’s product strategy. He however had his fair share of weaknesses and had gained a reputation for being distant and rude. This just goes to show that no man is without flaws.

He left day-to-day operations at Microsoft to focus on The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which has seen him donate billions to philanthropic causes. He dared to be different, to surpass the stereotype that billionaires are misers and even risked his company’s stock price through donations.

Bill Gates has managed to stay with his family of Melinda and their three children despite the pressures he faces. Every so often, we read about and see people who let business get in the way of their family life. The Foundation was built around the philanthropic principles of the Rockefeller Family and this just shows that as a successful person you can always learn from others before you. A unique thing about the foundation is the transparency it has which allows benefactors to access information that shows how its money is being spent.

As we conclude this article, a phenomenal thing about Gates was how he got fellow billionaires Warren Buffet and Mark Zuckerberg to pledge to donate at least half of their wealth over the course of time to charity.This is truly what being a transformational leader is all about!