Bill Gates founder. The real story of success and “talent” of Bill Gates

Bill Gates (William Henry Gates III) is an outstanding businessman, computer tycoon, founder and owner of Microsoft Corporation.

He loves cars, motor boats, playing poker and bridge.
He is passionate about work to the point of mania, and his passion for competition attracts him more than money.
He never ate at home because he didn't want to waste time cooking.

Bill Gates was born on October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington, USA. His great-grandfather was a mayor, his grandfather was a vice president of a national bank, and his father was a famous lawyer.
As a child, Bill was painfully shy and unsociable, he was not interested in the games of his peers, which naturally caused concern for his parents - according to rumors, they even took him to specialists. An experienced psychologist who tested the boy saw a strong character behind his defenselessness and told his mother that she could not change her son. The only way out is to adapt yourself.

At the age of eleven, Gates was eager to win a trip to the Seattle Space Needle, which was a prize in a competition organized by a local pastor. To do this, it was necessary to memorize the “Sermon on the Mount,” which included three chapters of the Gospel of Matthew. According to biographers Wallace and Erickson, Gates delivered the sermon flawlessly. Later he will say: “I can do anything I apply my intellect to.” According to Anne Stephens, a middle school teacher, Gates once recited a three-page monologue from a James Farber play verbatim after skimming it once.

Despite his unique abilities in mathematics and logic, Bill Gates did not show the leadership abilities characteristic of his parents. They could not even imagine that their son would become a real “shark” of world business.

Inquisitive and smart, Bill was bored in a regular elementary school. The parents realized that only a privileged education could meet their son’s abilities, and they transferred him to Lakeside Private School.

A year later, Bill created the first computer program. At the age of 15, he wrote a program to regulate traffic and earned $20,000 from this project. And at 17, he received an offer to write a software package for the distribution of energy at the Bonneville Dam.

Following family tradition, in 1973 Bill Gates entered Harvard to study as a lawyer, but he was still just as withdrawn and uncommunicative, which was absolutely not suitable for his chosen profession. He rarely attended student parties, except for those held by his close friend Steve Ballmer, who would become the future president of Microsoft. Studying went on as usual, but he did not feel any excitement. He remained a computer-obsessed “pale young man with a burning gaze.”

An old friend, Paul Allen, convinced him that he should open his own software company, but Bill was hesitant to quit his studies.
Everything changed when Allen bought the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics magazine on his way to visit a friend. There on the cover there was a picture of the Altair-8800, the first computer for the mass market.
With a magazine in his hands, he rushed into Bill's room: his friends realized that they had a chance. The home computer market was emerging before our eyes, and on the eve of the coming boom, software for these home machines was urgently needed. Gates immediately called MITS, the company that created the Altair, and said that he and Paul had BASIC, a programming language that could be used on this computer. They were bluffing - they had nothing at that moment. MITS was interested in the proposal, and Gates and Allen had to work at a frantic pace, creating program code and testing it on other computers.
They first touched Altair on the day of the presentation of their BASIC. By all rights, the bluff should have ended in failure. But the computer perceived the program as native, and MITS immediately wanted to buy the rights to it.
It was on this day, according to Gates, that the market for “software”, computer software, appeared.
Micro-Soft (they later dropped the hyphen) was born, where Bill and Paul hired their high school friends.

Microsoft's first five customers went bankrupt, but the guys did not despair and returned to Seattle in 1979. That year, Bill Gates was expelled from the university for absenteeism and poor academic performance, but this fact did not greatly upset the unfortunate student, since he received an offer from IBM to create an operating system for the world's first personal computer.

Bill Gates purchased QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) for $50,000, changed the name to MS-DOS and sold the license to IBM. The proceeds allowed Microsoft to operate for several years. The presentation of a new IBM computer with Microsoft software created a real sensation in the market. Many companies began to approach Microsoft for a license.
Microsoft continued to capture the global market with the release of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel applications. Thanks to the Corbis company, part of the Microsoft corporation, Bill Gates received a huge photo file of Bettman and other photographers. Photos were used for electronic distribution.

In 1986, Microsoft shares were traded on the stock exchange for the first time, and Bill Gates became fabulously rich overnight. Gigabytes turned into billions of dollars. While studying at Harvard, he arrogantly told one professor that he would become a millionaire at thirty. In fact, he became a billionaire at thirty-one.
The following year, Microsoft introduced the first version of Windows to the market, and already in 1993, total Windows sales per month exceeded one million. Windows95 arrived in 1995 and sold seven million copies in two weeks.

Microsoft's software became so widely used that the company came to the attention of the American antitrust committee, which several times tried to initiate a case to force the division of Bill Gates' monopoly.

Family

Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, was perhaps the most eligible bachelor. But in 1994, he married Melinda French, a Microsoft manager. They have three children. Jennifer's eldest daughter Katharine Gates is 15 years old. Rory's middle son John Gates is 11 years old. And the youngest, Phoebe Adele Gates, is 8 years old. Many envied his daughters and son. But Bill himself claims that he is not going to bequeath all his money to his children. Everyone must provide for themselves; this is their life position. And he wants his children to learn to make their way in life. Of course, he will not leave them completely without money; after all, it is the responsibility of parents to take care of their offspring. He will leave 10 million dollars for each. And then on your own.

But while the children live under the care of their parents and have not reached adulthood, dad tries to do a lot for their well-being. For example, so that Bill Gates's eldest daughter could participate in equestrian competitions in Florida, he rented a mansion for her for a period of 6 months, with a rent of 100 thousand dollars per month. Not a bad house for a 15 year old girl.

Bill Gates net worth

For several years in a row, he ranked first in the ranking of the richest people according to Forbes magazine. Bill Gates' fortune is estimated at $66 billion.

Together with fellow billionaire Warren Buffett, Gates launched a campaign in the summer of 2010 to encourage America's richest people to donate half of their wealth to charity. The organizers themselves have already taken part in this campaign.

Gates donated funds to a charitable foundation that he and his wife founded. Now, having retired from Microsoft, he devotes all his time to the work of the foundation.

Bill Gates' childhood and youth

And the success story of Bill Gates began in the city of Seattle, Washington, just over half a century ago. Bill Gates's date of birth is October 28, 1955. He was born to William Gates, a corporate lawyer, and Mary Maxwell Gates, a board member of First Interstate Bank.

Bill Gates studied at the most exclusive school in Seattle. His parents expected him to follow in his father's footsteps and attend Harvard Law School. However, Gates did not excel in grammar, civics and other subjects that he considered trivial, and by the seventh grade he became interested in mathematics and dreamed of becoming a professor. In 1968, when Bill and his schoolmate Paul Allen were in middle school, school officials decided to buy computer time from General Electric. At that time, systems based on the DEC PDP-10 microarchitecture ruled the market.

This changed Bill's life. He and Allen became seriously interested, they even skipped classes to study all the available computer literature. At the same time, Bill wrote one of his first programs - a simple simulator that allowed you to play against a machine. The school management underestimated its students; the computer time purchased for the whole year was used up in a few weeks. Fortunately, a new student arrived at Lakeside, whose father worked as the chief programmer at the Computer Center Corporation. The school's new contract allowed Gates and his comrades to continue their experiments.

Young hackers quickly figured out the intricacies of the machine, found vulnerabilities and began to cause trouble - they hacked the security, caused the system to crash several times, and changed the files in which information about the computer time used was recorded. Noticing this, the SSS suspended them from working with computers for several weeks.

Meanwhile, the company's business began to suffer from constant failures and weak security. Remembering the destructive activities of computer scientists from Lakeside, SSS them to identify flaws and security holes. In exchange, the company offered endless computer time. Of course, Bill and his comrades could not refuse. That’s when they went headlong into computers. The time of day lost its meaning; the guys hung out in the laboratory for hours. In addition to finding errors, they studied every material they could get their hands on about automated calculations and improved their skills.

In 1969, Computer Center Corporation began to have difficulties again, and in 1970 it declared itself bankrupt. Lakeside students lost jobs and access to computer time. There was nothing to do, I had to use my brains in a slightly different direction - to find a new place for self-realization. Fortunately, Paul's father Allen worked at the University of Washington at that time and had access to the computer center. The young programmers got down to business - looking for where they could apply their knowledge. The job itself came to them already in 1971, when the Information Sciences company hired guys to write a program that would create payrolls. In addition to unlimited computer time, employers agreed to pay developers every time their software makes a profit.

Another Gates project during his school years was a program for scheduling classes. The loophole built into it constantly reassigned Bill to classes with the most beautiful girls. In the tenth grade, Bill no longer studied computer science, but taught it.

A group of small programmers regularly received orders. Bill Gates, he says, was the initiator: "I was the guy who said, 'Let's call the real world and offer to sell them something.' And the most interesting thing is that he actually found and sold it - for example, he developed a program for optimizing street traffic and sold it for $20,000. This is at 15 years old!

The parents were somewhat frightened by their son’s passion and, by a strong-willed decision, removed him from computer projects. For a whole year, Bill did not approach the subject of his passion; he read biographies of great people from Napoleon to Roosevelt. But by the age of seventeen, Gates received an offer to write a software package for the distribution of energy at the Bonneville Dam, which his parents no longer objected to working on. Gates received $30,000 for working on this project for a year.

The last year of study at Lakeside brought Gates and Allen a new part-time job - TRW was faced with a bug that Bill and Paul had found in the Computer Center Corporation computer. However, this time they were given a task of a completely different level - to correct the mistake. It is believed that it was at TRW that Bill Gates began to develop his programming skills. It was then that they first started talking about creating a software company.

In 1973, Bill Gates entered Harvard University, intending to either follow in his father's footsteps or become a professor of mathematics. According to him, he was there in body, but not in soul. He spent most of his time at Harvard playing pinball, bridge, and poker. How many stories do we know when a child prodigy, under the influence of circumstances or the environment, over the years became the same as everyone else, but in relation to Bill Gates, this rule, fortunately, did not work. The focus on winning, the competitive spirit and the great desire to do better and more than others did not give him peace.

Gates's friend, Paul Allen, unexpectedly got a job at Honeywell in Boston, and he and Bill continued to spend all-night vigils writing programs. In 1974, Allen learned about the Altair 8800 personal computer created by MITS. Gates plucked up courage and proposed a new programming language, BASIC, to the company that created this computer. He, of course, lied that the language was developed specifically for Altair, but the program worked literally the first time. This option suited the managers, who invited young people to work on writing programming languages.

Creation and development of Microsoft

In the same year, Bill Gates proposed creating a software development company and gave it the name Microsoft (the first version was spelled Micro-Soft). Despite the painstaking work of its employees, the company initially experienced certain difficulties in distributing its products. The company did not have sufficient funds to hire a good sales manager, so Bill Gates' mother performed this function.

However, Bill Gates was forced to refuse IBM, since at that time he did not have developments to create an OS. Therefore, the head of Microsoft was forced to recommend that IBM turn to its competitor, Digital Research, for help, which would subsequently receive the task of developing the OS. Meanwhile, Microsoft, making time work for itself, buys the “raw” 86-DOS operating system for $50,000 from Seattle Computer and invites OS creator Tim Patterson to work. Bill Gates' company significantly improved 86-DOS, and soon MS-DOS was released, which Microsoft offered as an OS for the IBM PC, thereby beating Digital Research. In September 1980, IBM entered into a comprehensive contract with Microsoft. This contract was destined to change the history of the personal computer industry. Both IBM and Microsoft were winners. The controversial question is who won more. Gates's main competitor, Digital Research, changed its business direction and no longer participated in the competition.

In 1981, Microsoft became a corporation whose management was shared by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. In the same year, IBM introduced its PC with the 16-bit operating system MS-DOS 1.0. In addition, the computer software includes other Microsoft products - BASIC, COBOL, Pascal and others.

During this period it begins to develop rapidly. The company's first representative offices appear in Europe and the UK. In 1982, Gates convinced IBM management that MS-DOS needed to be sold under license to other computer manufacturers, thereby competing with Apple, which by that time was selling its computers based on its own OS.

Microsoft then thought about creating an operating system based on the graphical interface that Apple already had at its disposal by that time. But first, Microsoft is testing GUI capabilities in its Word and Excel programs, which were designed specifically for Apple Macintosh computers.

In 1983, Microsoft created the Mouse (mouse) to more conveniently enter data into a computer with a graphical interface. In the same year, the corporation introduced a text editor for MS-DOS. In addition, Bill Gates' company announces Windows, an extension of the operating system for MS-DOS in the form of a universal operating environment for graphical applications.

In 1986, Microsoft shares went on public sale. During the day, their price on the exchange increases from 22 to 28 dollars. In March 1990, the company announced dividends on shares, and shareholders were able to receive one more share as a gift.

Microsoft by far dominates the industry, with 44 percent of the software market's profits. This hinders the growth of their closest competitors. In 1991, Mitch Kapor, founder of rival Lotus, told reporters: “The revolution is over. Bill Gates won. The current software industry is the Kingdom of the Dead.”

People magazine considers Gates the embodiment of a true innovative entrepreneur. He says, “Gates is to programming what Edison is to the light bulb: part innovator, part entrepreneur, part salesman, but always a genius.” Playboy, to all its praises for Gates, added a story in 1991 in which Microsoft is mentioned as the savior of the programming industry. “DOS's role as a unified component on most PCs has helped solidify the United States' position as the epicenter of the global software industry.” And Forbes magazine in April 1991 put a photo of Gates on the cover and asked the question: “Can anyone stop him?”

In 1993, the number of registered Microsoft Windows users was 25 million. Thus, Windows becomes the world's most popular GUI operating system. Microsoft also produces Windows NT, a line of operating systems designed for workstations and servers.

Two years later, Windows 95 was launched into production. The excitement that accompanied the sale of Windows 95 was so great that even people who did not have a computer stood in line for this operating system. In January 1996, 25 million copies of Windows 95 were sold.

In 1996-97, Microsoft introduced the next generations of Windows NT (4.0 and 5.0), which were significantly improved compared to the first version of this software.

In 1998, Windows 98 was released, which was no different in appearance from Windows 95, with the exception of improved internal functions. Then Windows 2000 comes out, this program, according to many users, is Microsoft's best corporate OS.

Gates' departure from Microsoft

At the beginning of January 2008, at the opening of the Consumer Electronics Show, the head of Microsoft Corporation announced (this statement was called the main event of CES-2008!) that he was leaving Microsoft in July. Gates said that he intends to get closely involved in managing the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a charitable foundation created in 2000 with his wife, the main goal of which is to support projects in the field of education and health care. With the money from this fund, a vaccine against AIDS is being developed, assistance programs are being created, including medical assistance, for developing countries and their starving populations, and a lot of resources are spent on educational and scientific initiatives.

Critics of Gates, however, point out that, in percentage terms, Gates spends much less on philanthropy than is customary among rich people. In addition, part of his donations is used to buy computers for schools, and the money allocated includes the cost of purchasing Windows and Office, that is, it is sent back to Microsoft.

Since the end of June 2008, Gates has stepped away from active management of Microsoft. He transferred his powers to CEO Steve Ballmer, while simultaneously expanding the area of responsibility of Craig Mundy and Ray Ozzie. It is this “troika” that now determines the company’s course. Despite this, Bill Gates does not break with the company for good. He remains Chairman of the Board of Directors (but without executive powers), and also remains the largest (8.7% of Microsoft shares) shareholder of the corporation.

After resigning from Microsoft, Bill Gates founded the third company “bgC3” stands for Bill Gates Company Three. In the registration certificate, bgC3 is positioned as a “research (scientific) center.” bgC3 is not a commercial company and will not engage in venture capital investments. In accordance with regulatory documents, bgC3 is engaged in the provision of scientific and technological services, works in the field of analytics and research, and also creates and develops software and hardware.

Despite Gates' departure, Microsoft continues to develop new products. For example, on October 22, 2009, Windows 7 went on sale, which is the successor to Windows Vista, but has better functionality. As of March 2011, sales of the Windows 7 operating system in the world reached 300 million units!!!

Personal qualities of Bill Gates

One of the most important character traits of Bill Gates is the ability to recognize the talent and intelligence of another person. “I don’t hire fools,” he claims. Sometimes Gates himself conducts an interview with an applicant for a vacant position and, if necessary, personally calls and persuades the right person. Despite the fact that Bill Gates values his time very much, he understands that the most important thing in business is intellectual capital. His team is a team of the best minds, the strongest programmers. Highly qualified specialists are the real wealth of Microsoft. In the language of management theory, Bill Gates is the first intellectual property capitalist.

The desire to be first always and everywhere, to do anything better than others - this quality has been inherent in Bill Gates since childhood. And it bore fruit - dominance in the global computer industry market! Needless to say, more than 80% of all personal computers have Microsoft software installed - this is an undeniable success. But Bill Gates seems to be indifferent to him: “Success is a bad teacher. He makes smart people think they can't lose."

Pragmatism in literally everything and hard work are another characteristic of this person. Work, work and work again - this attitude is the core of the brainchild of Bill Gates. He considers rest a sign of weakness, so he works long hours every day, because he is convinced that if you stand in one place, the value of what you have achieved very quickly comes to zero. Where, where, but in the world of computers this is most noticeable. It’s not for nothing that they say that if you have mastered a new program, it means that it is already outdated. This is for us, ordinary users, but what can we say about the creators?!

11 rules of Bill Gates

Bill Gates often visits schools and always shares his experience and vision of global problems at his speeches. Every time he finishes a speech, he talks about 11 things that he believes will not be taught in school. He talks about how political correctness has created a generation of children who are out of touch with reality and unable to survive in a harsh world.
1. Life is not fair - get used to it.
2. Society does not care at all about your SELF-ESTEEM. ACHIEVEMENTS are expected of you above all.
3. You WILL NOT earn $60,000 a year immediately after graduating from school. You don't become a VP with a personal driver until you earn enough to do both.
4. If you think that the teacher is too harsh towards you, that’s okay. Wait until you have a boss.
5. Is frying hamburgers beneath your dignity? Your grandparents thought completely differently. For them, frying hamburgers was an opportunity to get a foothold in this life.
6. If something didn’t work out for you, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine, LEARN from your mistakes. Change your attitude towards failure.
7. Parents were not always as boring as you think now. Maybe constant care for you made them like this? They feed you, clothe you, and constantly listen to you about how wonderful you are. So before you criticize your parents' generation, start with yourself.
8. Perhaps in your school it is not correct to openly call a loser a loser and there are no more losers left in your school, but not in life. In some schools it is no longer possible to repeat a year because you are given AS MANY attempts to PASS the exams as it takes to be promoted to another class. In life everything is COMPLETELY different.
9. Life is not divided into semesters. You won't have summer holidays and your employer won't help you FIND YOURSELF. You will have to do it yourself in your free time.
10. They don’t show REAL life on TV. In real life, you won't be able to sit in a cafe all day and chat with friends.
11. Be more kind to the “nerds.” One of them may end up being your boss after you graduate.

Who doesn't know this name? Bill Gates is the head of Microsoft, a leader in the production of computer software. The corporation's income has long exceeded tens of billions of dollars a year, and its branches are located in all countries of the civilized world. Of course, the biography of Bill Gates deserves close attention.

Childhood and youth

William Gates was born in Seattle on October 28, 1955, the son of a lawyer and a schoolteacher. Besides him, the family had two more daughters. William's favorite subject at school was mathematics, but he did not like the humanities, considered them unnecessary and, accordingly, had low grades in these subjects. Gates took up programming at the age of 13 while studying at the private Lakeside School.

The year 1973 was marked by Bill Gates's admission to Harvard University. Here he meets Steve Ballmer, currently Microsoft's vice president of sales and support.

While studying at Harvard, Gates developed BASIC, the programming language for the first Altair 8800 minicomputer. In 1975, together with Paul Allen Bill Gates starts Microsoft- this matter absorbs him so much that he, without regret, quits his studies at Harvard University. The friends were convinced that personal computers had a great future - and today we can say with confidence that their conviction was truly prophetic.

Brilliant Bill

Gates told his Harvard professors, “I will be a millionaire before I turn 30.” Everything turned out much better than he expected - at the age of 31 he became a billionaire.

Bill Gates' genius was evident not only in his participation in the development of new PC products, but also in his gift as a manager and strategist. He frequently meets with clients and maintains contact with his employees around the world. Microsoft is rapidly gaining momentum, improving its information products designed to make the user's work at the computer as easy as possible.

March 2005 saw Bill Gates awarded a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for his significant contributions to UK businesses and work to reduce global poverty.

Bill Gates was considered the richest man on the planet from 1996 to 2007 and in 2009. In September 2009, his fortune reached $50 billion, however, the onset of the global crisis somewhat reduced this figure the following year.

In June 2008, Gates resigned as head of Microsoft, while remaining non-executive chairman of the board of directors. At the moment, he is paying more attention to his foundation - the latest sensations include his proposal to all billionaires to donate 50% of their own wealth to charity. At the same time, Gates is ready to be the first to lead by example.

Bill Gates is a man of varied interests. He is the founder of Corbis Corporation, which develops the world's largest source of visual information - a digital archive of photographs and works of art held in different collections and in different countries. Bill Gates is also a member of the board of Icos Corporation, owner of Darwin Molecular shares, and has invested in the Teledesic company, which is developing a project to launch Earth satellites to provide two-way broadband telecommunications. His versatility is not an obstacle to his hobbies: the Microsoft founder loves to play bridge and golf, reads a lot, collects cars and jumps on a trampoline to concentrate his thoughts.

Personal life

Bill Gates' personal life is also prosperous. On January 1, 1994, he married Melinda French Gates, an employee of Microsoft. For the wedding, Gates rented one of the islands of Haiti. The Gates couple have three children: Jennifer Katharine, Rory John and Phoebe Adele. The family lives in a large, spacious house (total area of 40 thousand square feet) on the shores of Lake Washington. The house is full of modern electronic systems, being an example of a “smart home” of the 21st century.

Books by Bill Gates

First book "Road to the Future" co-authored with Microsoft Vice President Nathan Myhrvold and journalist Peter Rynearson, it was published in 1995. In it, the founder of Microsoft shares his thoughts on how society is changing under the influence of developing information technologies. The book immediately became a bestseller and was published in millions of copies in 20 countries.

In 1996, the book “The Road to the Future” underwent changes and was published in a second edition. This was mainly due to the change in the orientation of Gates’ company towards Internet technologies. Accordingly, the second edition of the book was supplemented with material about the World Wide Web and its role in the history of the development of civilization.

Bill Gates' second book "Business at the speed of thought"– was co-written by Collins Hemingway in 1999. It reflected the idea of how information technology can help solve business problems. Like the previous one, this book also became a bestseller and was released in 60 countries in 25 languages.

Bill Gates donates all proceeds from book sales to his charitable foundation.

Bill Gates Foundation

The Gates couple are the founders of a charitable foundation Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, founded in 1994 and designed to support philanthropic initiatives in the fields of education and healthcare. It is thanks to this fund that low-income people in the United States and Canada have the opportunity to work with PCs and access the Internet in public libraries. Funds from the Bill Gates Foundation are also allocated to the development of various public projects in other countries, in particular, to activities to overcome poverty, as well as the prevention and treatment of viral diseases in developing countries in Africa and Asia.

It is no exaggeration to say that the biography of Bill Gates is a hymn to human intelligence and genius, inspiring many young people passionate about programming around the world.

Greetings! There won't be a long introduction today. I just want to once again write about a person I sincerely admire. I don’t think anyone needs to explain who Bill Gates is.

I once saw a funny comment under one of the articles dedicated to the founder of Microsoft. Something like “Lucky guy, he made so much money on his Windows. You don’t have to work at the post office all your life for pennies.” Just lucky! Neither add nor subtract.

So, Bill Gates: biography, interesting facts and advice from the richest man in the world.

Bill Gates was born 62 years ago in Seattle, America. The family was considered quite prosperous: the father was a lawyer, the mother was a school teacher and a member of the university board. As an adult, Bill Gates often emphasized that his parents always encouraged his desire to think and debate.

As a teenager, Bill, like many at his age, began to demonstratively conflict with others: both at school and at home. The psychologist advised “not to force the child to obey and traditional behavior.”

Parents stopped “pressuring” and transferred Billy to the elite private school Lakeside - with an emphasis on mathematics. In the late 60s, the future founder of Microsoft first “met” the computer and fell in love with it at first sight. Antediluvian computers occupied entire rooms and were terribly “stupid.” But Bill and his school friend Paul Allen spent the whole weekend near these “monsters.” Sometimes staying up until the morning.

Where did the future billionaire start? As usual, with nonsense and nonsense. At the age of 13, Gates wrote his first program (a game of tic-tac-toe). But at 15 – a program for traffic control (and received $20,000 for it).

At the age of 17, the Bonneville Dam energy distribution program had already earned him $30,000.

The predictable admission to Harvard did not make Bill happy. He became interested in playing poker and did not know what to do with himself. But in 1975 everything changed dramatically.

Paul Allen brought Gates a magazine with a photo of the world's first computer for the mass market on the cover.

Computers WITHOUT SOFTWARE!

The competition for such a “tidbit” was crazy. And we had to act very, very quickly. The friends worked like crazy day and night. And not in vain - the first presentation in BASIC was quite successful.

In 1975, friends leave Harvard and create the legendary Microsoft. It doesn’t take long for a company to become mega-successful. Sometimes business founders were so tired that they fell asleep during a meeting with clients. And Microsoft's first five customers went bankrupt.

In 1979, friends received a lucrative offer from IBM. But Bill was forced to refuse and recommend a direct competitor, Digital Research. At that time, Microsoft did not have ready-made developments to create an operating system.

How did it happen that the order from IBM finally went to Bill Gates? While Digital Research was developing a new operating system, Microsoft bought the “raw” operating system from Seattle Computer and lured its creator, Tim Patterson, to work for them.

After modification, MS-DOS was born, which Bill Gates proposed to IBM, one step ahead of its competitor Digital Research.

In September 1980, Microsoft and IBM finally reached a contract. A contract that changed the personal computing industry for decades.

How did Microsoft take over the software market?

Microsoft's history is impressive. In the 80s the company grew at a crazy pace. Bill Gates opens branches in the UK and Europe. In 1982, he proposed to IBM management to sell MS-DOS to PC manufacturers under license.

What else has he created? In 1983, Microsoft offered consumers a mouse and a text editor for MS-DOS. In the same year, Bill Gates announced a universal OS for graphics applications.

In 1986, Microsoft shares were floated onto the open market. On the very first day, their price increases from $22 to 28.

In the early 90s, Bill Gates' company already received 44% of the profits of the entire software market. In April 1991, Forbes magazine featured a photo of the Microsoft founder on its cover with the provocative caption: “Can anyone stop him?”

In 1993, Windows was officially recognized as the world's most popular GUI operating system. The number of its registered users exceeded 25 million. Each subsequent version of Windows (95, 98 and 2000) caused another surge of excitement. And it made Bill Gates several billion richer.

Today Microsoft is a giant corporation with about 100,000 employees and branches in 100 countries.

Since mid-2008, the richest man in the world has stepped away from active management of the company. But he still strives to be the first always and in everything.

Bill Gates Rules

You should only learn from those who have achieved success in life. Here are five tips from Bill Gates that he often shares in interviews and public appearances at colleges and universities.

No one cares about your self-esteem. Society evaluates only specific achievements.
Life is unfair - get used to it.
If something doesn't work out for you, don't blame your parents. Change your attitude towards failure and learn from your mistakes. And stop whining. Before criticizing your parents, take an objective look at yourself.
Movies and TV series don't show real life. In reality, you won't sit all day in a cafe and chat with friends, like in the TV series "Friends".
Do you think that the teacher is too harsh on you? Wait until you have a boss.

Back in 1995, Bill Gates was recognized as the richest man in the world. At that time, his fortune was estimated at almost $13 billion. Since then, Bill Gates has not left the top lines of the ranking of the world's “richest”.

He is still considered an expert on many issues. Bill Gates is asked about cryptocurrency, the future of the IT sector and oil prices. By the way, he also came up with an original way of taking notes. More precisely, he modified Cornell's method. Gates divides the sheet into several squares, in each of which he writes down thoughts connected by the same logic.

This amazing man is also a husband and father of three children, a writer, philanthropist, co-chairman of a charitable foundation and a member of the board of directors of Berkshire Hathaway.

How much does he earn per minute? In 2015, Bill Gates received $3.25 billion. It turns out that every minute the legendary founder of Microsoft becomes richer by $6,600. At the current dollar exchange rate in Russia, this is almost 400,000 rubles. At the same time, Bill Gates is practically an ascetic in everyday life. And he often repeats that money is not the main thing for him...

William Henry Gates III. Born October 28, 1955 in Seattle, USA. Better known as Bill Gates. American entrepreneur and social activist, philanthropist, co-founder (with Paul Allen) and former largest shareholder of Microsoft.

Until June 2008, he was the head of the company; after leaving his post, he remained as its non-executive chairman of the board of directors. He is also co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In the period from 1996 to 2007, in 2009 and in 2015 - the richest person on the planet according to Forbes magazine. His fortune in March 2015, according to Forbes magazine, was estimated at $79.2 billion, an increase of $13.2 billion compared to September 2012. This made him the richest person in the United States 20 times in a row and the first in the world 16 times (the second was Carlos Slim Helu with his family, his fortune is estimated at $ 77.1 billion).

Bill Gates is one of the record holders for the amount of money donated to charity: between 1994 and 2010, he contributed more than $28 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In February 2010, Gates made a proposal to all billionaires to donate half of their wealth for charitable activities.

Gates was born in Seattle, Washington, the son of corporate lawyer William Henry Gates II and board member of First Interstate Bank, Pacific Northwest Bell, and United Way national board member Mary Maxwell Gates. Gates has 2 sisters: the older one is Christy and the younger one is Libby.

Gates attended Seattle's most exclusive school, Lakeside, where he was able to develop his programming skills on the school's mini-computer. At the age of thirteen, Bill wrote his first program, the Tic Tac Toe game, in the BASIC programming language. In eighth grade, during a programming class, he met tenth-grader Paul Allen. With his friends, Gates tested the PDP-10 computer from Digital Equipment Corporation, owned by Computer Center Corporation (CCC).

When the time allotted for Bill and his friend Paul to work in the CCC expired, they hacked the program. For hacking computers, four students at the school - Rick Wayland, Kent Evans, Paul Allen and Bill Gates - were banned from working on computers throughout the summer. The initiator of the punishment was the Computer Center Corporation, whose computer the students hacked. After the punishment ended, the students offered the company to find errors in their software in exchange for the opportunity to work on the company’s computers. The company agreed, and Gates and his friends studied a variety of software source codes written in languages such as FORTRAN, LISP, and machine code.

This cooperation continued until 1970, when the company went bankrupt. Next year, Information Sciences, Inc. hired four students (including Bill and Paul) to write a payroll program. The program was needed in the Cobol language, in return the guys received free working time on the PDP-10. They called their company Lakeside Programming Group, but were unable to complete the work.

At school, Gates did not excel in grammar, social studies, and other subjects he considered trivial, but he did achieve top marks in mathematics. By the end of elementary school, Gates's bad behavior began to worry his parents and teachers so much that he was referred to a psychiatrist.

At age 17, Gates, Paul Allen, and Paul Gilbert founded Traf-O-Data. The name was coined by Gates from “jack-o’-lantern” - a jack-o’-lantern. The company's goal was to create meters to read road traffic and generate reports for traffic engineers. The Traf-O-Data device was sold 1972 to 1982. and as a result, $794.31 remained in the company’s account.

December 25, 1972 (Christmas Day) Bud Pembroke, the one who invited Bill and Paul to work for Information Service Inc., invited them to work for TRW. A large software project was underway for the Bonneville Power Administration using the PDP-10.

In 1973, Bill Gates entered Harvard University, where he met his future partner Steve Ballmer. After 2 years, Gates was expelled and immediately began creating software.

In January 1975, Paul Allen read an article in Popular Electronics magazine about the new Altair 8800 personal computer. After reading the article, Gates contacted the president of Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), the developer of the new computer, Ed Roberts, and told him that he and his friend are working on the software for this computer (although in fact Gates and Allen had nothing to do with the Altair 8800, but emulated that processor).

The MITS president invited Paul to his office and he demonstrated a working BASIC interpreter for their computer, and within a few weeks Paul and Bill were working at MITS. They thought about calling their company “Allen and Gates,” but felt that it was more suitable for a law office, and then Paul suggested Micro-Soft, from microprocessors and software. In the credits of the BASIC language interpreter, which they created at the request of MITS, the friends included the following line: "Micro-Soft BASIC: "Paul Allen wrote the supporting codes. Bill Gates wrote the executable codes. Monte Davidoff wrote a mathematical library".

In 1975, Bill was arrested for the first time, for speeding and driving without a driver's license, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After which he began to quarrel with the policeman and he was put in a “bad” cell, where there were drunkards and it was not cleaned. Bill made the required one call to Paul Allen and he collected the last money available to rescue Bill. "Micro-Soft" was created specifically for the development of programs for MITS, in the city of Albuquerque. Within a year of working for MITS, the hyphen in Gates and Allen's company name disappeared, and on November 26, 1976, the new trademark "Microsoft" was registered with the New Mexico District Clerk's Office. Paul got 36% of the company's shares, Bill 64%, basically how Bill saw his contribution to the product.

In the joint business, Paul Allen was involved in technical ideas and promising developments; Gates was closer to negotiations, contracts and other business communications. And yet, the friends resolved the main issues together - sometimes, as Gates later admitted, the arguments continued for 6-8 hours in a row.

In the mid-1970s, the CP/M operating system was the most popular operating system for Intel 8080 and Zilog Z80 based computers. In 1980, IBM began searching for a suitable operating system for the IBM PC personal computer. Initially it was planned to use CP/M for it. Negotiations were held with Digital Research, a company owned by Gary Kildall and his wife. However, the deal did not take place, and IBM entered into an agreement with the small company Microsoft (the mother of whose owner, Bill Gates, was the chairman of the executive committee at United Way International, along with two very influential leaders of the computer market monster IBM, John Opel and John Akers (John Opel, President since 1981, then John Akers, President since 1985).

Microsoft did not have its own OS for Intel 8086 processors, so it licensed 86-DOS (QDOS), which was a 16-bit clone of CP/M, from Seattle Computer Products. Subsequently, Microsoft completely bought the rights to 86-DOS, after which, after working on it, it was completely adapted for IBM personal computers, earning $50,000. This is how the MS-DOS operating system appeared and the beginning of the collaboration between Microsoft and IBM.

In 1977, Gates was arrested a second time, for running a red light and, again, for driving without a driver's license.

In 1980, Microsoft signed a contract with IBM to develop MS-DOS for IBM. But Microsoft did not meet the deadline and transferred the source code to IBM for faster development in 1981. This half-baked system featured a demo game called "DONKEY.BAS" made by Bill Gates and Neil Konzen. "DONKEY.BAS" was a tech demo of the PC-DOS system and the BASIC language, and is the predecessor of all IBM PC games. In this game you control a racing car and have to avoid donkeys. In 2012, this game was re-released for Windows Phone 7.5/8 (free to download), iOS (costs $0.99).

Next, Microsoft is working on a completely new operating system, the idea of which was taken from Xerox and Apple. Cooperation with IBM continued and on November 20, 1985, the new Microsoft Windows operating system appeared. Thus began the era of Windows - the operating system that glorified and made Gates the richest man.

In 1989, Gates founded the multimedia company Corbis and was arrested a third time on charges of drunk driving.

In 1994, Gates acquired Codex Leicester, a collection of works by Leonardo da Vinci. Since 2003 it has been on display at the Seattle Art Museum.

In 1995, Bill Gates wrote the book The Road Ahead, in which he outlined his views on the direction in which society is moving in connection with the development of information technology. In 1996, when Microsoft was refocused on Internet technologies, Gates made significant adjustments to the book.

In 1997, Gates spoke via video link in Boston at the Macworld Expo, where they talked about the development of MS Office, IE, Java products for the Macintosh, and investing $150 million in Apple. Bill's performance was broadcast on the big screen and it was like Big Brother performing in the Apple "1984" commercial.

In 1997, Gates became a victim of extortion by Chicago resident Adam Quinn Pletcher. Gates testified at the subsequent trial. Pletcher was found guilty and sentenced in July 1998 to six years in prison.

The following episode gives some insight into Gates' religious views: when a correspondent for The Times magazine asked whether he believed in God, Gates replied: "I don't have any facts about him."

According to Forbes magazine, Gates donated money to George W. Bush's presidential campaign in 2004. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Gates donated at least $33,335 to more than 50 political campaigns during the 2004 election.

In 1999, Bill Gates wrote the book Business @ the Speed of Thought, which shows how information technology can solve business problems in a completely new way. Of particular note is the fact that Bill Gates' ideas fit well with the concept of lean manufacturing.

This book has been released in 25 languages and is sold in more than 60 countries. Business at the Speed of Thought received critical acclaim and was featured on the New York Times, America Today, Wall Street Journal, and Amazon.com bestseller lists.

On December 14, 2004, Bill Gates joined the board of Berkshire Hathaway, thus formalizing his relationship with Warren Buffett. Berkshire Hathaway is a conglomerate that includes Geico (auto insurance), Benjamin Moore (paints), and Fruit of the Loom (textiles). Gates also serves on the board of Icos, a Bothell biotechnology company.

On 2 March 2005, the UK Foreign Office announced that Gates would receive the title of Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his contributions to UK businesses and his efforts to reduce global poverty.

At the end of 2005, Bill Gates and his wife Melinda Gates were named People of the Year by American Time magazine.

On January 7, 2008, Bill Gates announced his intentions to step down as the head of Microsoft Corporation in July 2008, switching his activities to charity.

On June 15, 2008, Bill Gates announced his intention to leave his full-time job at Microsoft as of July 2008. After leaving his post, he intends to devote himself entirely to managing the charitable foundation Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

June 27, 2008 was Bill Gates' last as Microsoft CEO. Despite this, he is not breaking with the company for good - Gates will remain Chairman of the Board of Directors (without executive powers), will be involved in special projects, and will also remain the largest (8.7% of Microsoft shares) shareholder of the corporation. In 2008, Gates resigned as president of Microsoft Corporation, and in 2010 he left the post of chief executive officer. Steve Ballmer received both positions. In December 2011, he denied rumors about his possible return to managing the company.

At the end of October 2008, in the city of Kirkland (Washington State, USA), Bill Gates registered his third company called “bgC3”. Unverified sources claim that "bgC3" stands for Bill Gates Company Three. It was announced that this will be a research center whose tasks will include the provision of scientific and technological services, work in the field of analytics and research, as well as the creation and development of software and hardware.

Since 2009, Bill Gates has published the “Bill Gates Annual Message” on the official website of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in which he talks about the achievements of his charitable organization and also makes plans for the future.

Personal life of Bill Gates:

On January 1, 1994, Gates married Melinda French. They have three children - Jennifer Katharine (born 1996), Rory John (born 1999) and Phoebe Adele (born 2002).