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Since it's important to be accurate when you're condemning someone - Gates never tried to take back Paul Allen's shares. That isn't merely a bit of nuance. It
by adventured 5y ago
Since it's important to be accurate when you're condemning someone -
Gates never tried to take back Paul Allen's shares. That isn't merely a bit of nuance. It never happened.
The only thing that ever happened was the infamous discussion between Gates and Ballmer, which Allen overheard. Gates offered to purchase the shares in 1983, which Allen rejected. Allen is quite clear about what happened in his book Idea Man.
A detestable conversation by Gates, certainly. And yet Allen checked out of Microsoft in 1982 and kept his enormous fortune from it and Gates never tried to take it from him.
Everyone on HN would spontaneously combust if they were judged by their worst thoughts or conversations, without exception.
- soperj 5y agoThey were discussing ways to dilute his shares. Bill tried to buy him out at a much reduced rate ($5 a share). When they went public a couple years later, the share price was $35 on the first day. Either way the whole thing was precipitated because he wasn't being as productive on account of having cancer. Bill likes to say that the relationship was repaired near the end of Paul's life, but at the same time, he wouldn't take or return a call from him when he was on his death bed, which they talk about in the mini-doc "Inside Bill's Brain".