Bill Gates

William Henry Gates, known to his friends and the rest of us as Bill , is probably the world’s most prominent entrepreneur. From a teenager’s interest in computer programming, he founded and built Microsoft to its position of global dominance of the vast personal computer market. He is certainly one of the world’s richest individuals. Entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship and enterprise are today very fashionable topics. The self-made, intelligent and visionary individual, who sets up a business that eventually arrives on everyone’s ‘must have’ list and sees off all rivals, is now the focus of press, film and TV. Entrepreneurs are now role models. Yet, in 1955, when Bill was born in Seattle, very few people ever mentioned the word ‘entrepreneur’. Even as recently as 1975, when Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft, calling a business person an entrepreneur was often a term of abuse in Britain, if not in the US.

"Merely being extremely rich is not the same thing as being an entrepreneur"

Bill Gates was born in Seattle to a father who was a leading lawyer there and a mother who was part of a prominent banking family. So, young Bill had no problem with social status and the family was not short of money. However, there is evidence that Bill was driven by a joy of creativity. As a boy, he was fascinated by computers and programming. He even managed to convince his teachers to let him drop moths so that he could pursue programming. At the age of 14, Bill and his school friend, (and future Microsoft partner) Paul Allen, converted an Intel processor into a traffic counter and earned $20,000 each for themselves.

"Ultimately, the PC will be a window to everything people are interested in-and everything we need to know."-Bill Gates

Some see him as an innovative visionary who sparked a computer revolution. Others see him as a modern-day robber baron whose predatory practices have stifled competition in the software industry. Regardless of what his supporters and detractors may think, few can argue that Bill Gates is one of, if not the most successful entrepreneur of the 20th century. In just 25 years, he built a two-man operation into a multibillion-dollar colossus and made himself the richest man in the world somewhere along the way. Yet he accomplished this feat not by inventing new technology, but by taking existing technology, adapting it to a specific market, and then dominating that market through innovative promotion and cunning business savvy.

Gates' first exposure to computers came while he was attending the prestigious Lakeside School in Seattle. A local company offered the use of its computer to the school through a Teletype link, and young Gates became entranced by the possibilities of the primitive machine. Along with fellow student Paul Allen, he began ditching class to work in the school's computer room. Their work would soon pay off. When Gates was 15, he and Allen went into business together. The two teens netted $20,000 with Traf-O-Data, a program they developed to measure traffic flow in the Seattle area.

Despite his love and obvious aptitude for computer programming, and perhaps because of his father's influence, Gates entered Harvard in the fall of 1973. By his own admission, he was there in body but not in spirit, preferring to spend his time playing poker and video games rather than attending class.

All that changed in December 1974, when Allen showed Gates a magazine article about the world's first microcomputer, the Altair 8800. Seeing an opportunity, Gates and Allen called the manufacturer, MITS, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and told the president they had written a version of the popular computer language BASIC for the Altair. When he said he'd like to see it, Gates and Allen, who actually hadn't written anything, starting working day and night in Harvard's computer lab. Because they did not have an Altair to work on, they were forced to simulate it on other computers. When Allen flew to Albuquerque to test the program on the Altair, neither he nor Gates was sure it would run. But run it did. Gates dropped out of Harvard and moved with Allen to Albuquerque, where they officially established Microsoft. MITS collapsed shortly thereafter, but Gates and Allen were already writing software for other computer start-ups including Commodore, Apple and Tandy Corp.

The duo moved the company to Seattle in 1979, and that's when Microsoft hit the big time. When Gates learned IBM was having trouble obtaining an operating system for its new PC, he bought an existing operating system from a small Seattle company for $50,000, developed it into MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System), then licensed it to IBM. The genius of the IBM deal, masterminded by Gates, was that while IBM got MS-DOS, Microsoft retained the right to license it to other computer makers.

Much as Gates had anticipated, after the first IBM PCs were released, cloners such as Compaq began producing compatible PCs, and the market was soon flooded with clones. Like IBM, rather than produce their own operating systems, the cloners decided it was cheaper to purchase MS-DOS off the shelf. As a result, MS-DOS became the standard operating system for the industry, and Microsoft's sales soared from $7 million in 1980 to $16 million in 1981.