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What Bill Gates was doing at 20 years old
- jhoechtl 9y agoIm this case I would also ask what where his parents doing when Bill Gates was ten. I don't know for the US but performing well is very much a question of heritage and ancestry.
- dogma1138 9y agoIt’s amusing that someone still thinks that Microsoft or a Billionaire are a needed descriptors in a title about Bill Gates.
- shoo 9y agofor the right audience you could arguably also omit "Gates"
- fwdpropaganda 9y agoWarren, is that you?
- wonton2 9y agoI had this game with my friends where you are supposed to guess who you are (name on a note on your forehead). I wrote Bill Gates on a note, thinking that would be easy, and none of them knew who he was before i explained it. They are not stupid people and all of them have higher education. Just none of them in a technical field, also not americans.
- thaumasiotes 9y agoIn contrast, the Chinese high school students I met who signed up for free low-quality English lessons did know who Bill Gates was, though they didn't know the name "Microsoft".
- Moodles 9y agoDoes anyone know what proportion of those who drop out of Harvard to make their own companies actually succeed? I suspect we only hear of the success stories of Gates, Zuckerberg, etc. But it would be interesting to know the facts.
- vostok 9y agoI don't have any statistics, but I had several friends in high school who got into college and ended up dropping out. I don't think any of them regret it. Only one of them dropped out to start his own company. None of them went to Harvard or MIT. This doesn't mean that college is a bad decision. It's probably the right decision for most people.
- ZgjimDida 9y agoThat's an interesting question but it is possible that the number of companies that succeed from Harvard dropouts is actually higher than those of the companies from some unknown University dropouts. People don't usually get that a Harvard dropout has way different (and I mean way better) socioeconomic, cultural and intellectual circumstances to succeed than say some dropout from a below average University somewhere in the world.
- Moodles 9y agoMakes sense. If you're a moderately successful individual to go to Harvard, then if you make a decision to drop out to improve your circumstances then it's probably for a good reason, e.g. a good business venture. Similarly that's why we always hear the statistic about those who hop jobs often are the ones with the highest salaries. Whereas if you're less successful and go to a bad school or something, dropping out may also lead to a better life than your current situation, but the bar is a lot lower of what constitutes "better". Also, generally speaking, students in Harvard are probably more career-driven than the average person, so when they drop out they've probably given it more thought than others on average and thus are more likely to make a success of it.
- davidwihl 9y agoHarvard, unlike some other Ivies such as Columbia, let's you take time off your degree without penalty to explore ventures and other ideas. So the ones who don't succeed may have simply returned to Harvard to complete their degrees. It is a multiclass, not binary, classification problem.
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- draugadrotten 9y agoAt 20 years old, Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates was living the privileged life of a rich white kid. His father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way. Gates' maternal grandfather was JW Maxwell, a national bank president. If anything, the story about Bill Gates shows that your own success will change your childrens' future.
- ggg9990 9y agoNot necessarily — I know several people who grew up in even more privileged households and never did anything useful with their lives.
- rezoner 9y agoWhich is a story for the most of the priviliged children as they don't have too much motivation to excel in anything.
- wklauss 9y agoWealth is not as great a motivator as people think and motivation and ambition exist in a broad spectrum. Most people want more money, yes, and will work harder to get it. But in order to "excel" (like Gates did) requires a different kind of ambition. It's a very complex issue, especially because we tend to mix professional success with wealth and because growing in a wealthy family grant you certain expectations, education and networks of friends that steer you toward certain goals.
- koolba 9y ago> Wealth is not as great a motivator as people think and motivation and ambition exist in a broad spectrum. On the contrary, it’s a demotivater. Hunger, both literal and figurative, is the greatest motivator. It’s not unheard of to find it in the affluent either, just not as common. One other thing I’ve noticed is that the figuratively hungry never seem to be satiated. I say that as a complement. It doesn’t matter how they started, they won’t rest on their laurels as there’s more to conquer. Combining that hunger with the resources and support network of a (relatively) affluent family is a surefire recipe for success.
- crispyporkbites 9y ago> Gates and Allen both admitted later that they had lied and told MITS that they already had a version of BASIC for the Altair when they hadn't yet written the software. "We had nothing," Allen told CBS' 60 Minutes in an interview. > But by the time the audacious pair met with MITS in New Mexico two months later, their programming language was ready. > After selling that software to MITS, both Gates and Allen took jobs with the company in Albuquerque at the end of 1975, while also forming their own partnership, then called "Micro-Soft." It seems even 40 years ago the only way to get ahead was to "hustle" and "growth hack". I wonder if Elizabeth Holmes also took inspiration from here...
- mseebach 9y agoThe hustle was getting the meeting, by the time they actually sold the software, it existed and worked. I really, really, struggle to see anything wrong with that.
- coldtea 9y agoWell, it might also have not worked (e.g. someone sells a client software they don't yet have, hoping to build it in the meantime before the delivery, but fails to finish it for whatever reason -- it might just take more time, or he finds out he doesn't have the needed skills). That would have made a client wait based on a lie ('we already have the software') and depend of them (when the client could have gone shopping elsewhere where they do have the software he needs), which could have cost millions in damages (e.g. failure to get its products to market, because the component he though he bought didn't actually exist when it was supposed to delivered)...
- taborj 9y agoMITS were not dependent on Gates and Allen for BASIC; MITS didn't even have plans to have a BASIC interpreter. They were approached by Gates and Allen out of the blue, and had no contract in place If they had not delivered, it wouldn't have set MITS back at all, though it certainly would have not helped sell more Altairs. MITS would have (likely was) free to entertain offers from other entities.
- shubhamjain 9y agoI have always wondered how significant was Paul Allen's contribution to Microsoft? He quit in 1982. I admit that was after the watershed deal with IBM, but Bill Gates lead the company to create Windows, Office, and Xbox; from 128 employees to 39,000+ [1]. Was he just lucky to be friend with a relentless business genius? [1]: https://www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company.htm https://www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company....
- betocmn 9y agoWe will never know. Accordingly to Paul himself, he was the one with the grand vision. The title he chose for his book is hilariously confronting: "Idea Man".
- davidwihl 9y agoRead "The Accidental Zillionaire" Allen was smart but not $20B smart as his track record in post-Microsoft shows. https://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Zillionaire-Demystifying-Paul-Allen/dp/0471234915 https://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Zillionaire-Demystifying-P...
- daniel_iversen 9y agoWhoa, what is the name of that cool looking retro computer in the photo? Many old cheap early micro computers had absolutely terrible keyboards (apart from some of the later very successful ones like the commodores etc) as far as I remember, but that one looks very nice!
- davidwihl 9y agoRadio Shack TRS 80-100. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago> ... retro computer in the photo... I don't think it was retro when the photo was taken.
- andai 9y agoYou don't-think correct!
- jlebrech 9y agoomg that TRS-80 wish someone make a modern day one, for raspberry-pi
- dboreham 9y agoHow to become rich: Start out rich.
- matte_black 9y agoStep one: Get rich.
- bluedevil2k 9y agoThat's incredibly naive. That completely devalues the hard work and genius of Bill Gates. Being rich had nothing to do with him spending the better part of his teens at the local university, working on their computer. Being rich had nothing to do with him selling his BASIC to MITS (Remember, he was hiding the fact that he was a student). Being rich had nothing to do with him selling an OS to IBM. Your comment comes off as petty, and an excuse that unsuccessful people use to explain why they too aren't billionaires.
- maxerickson 9y agoIt's pretty likely, in the 1970s, that the majority of teenagers with access to computer time were quite well off. Of course he probably still worked pretty hard, but lots of people wouldn't have been within 100 miles of a computer before they were 20.
- bluedevil2k 9y agoThat's a rather broad generalization with no data to back it up. As an example otherwise, look at Bill Joy, founder of Sun and the son of a school vice-principal. And so what if both just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Success isn't pre-ordained. There's always a little luck in every success story.
- maxerickson 9y agoIt's not like you are bringing the data storm with your dismissals of the advantages of wealth in the late 1960s and early 1970s.