Bill Gates, Microsoft

Monday 2nd February 2009

Name: William Henry Gates
Company: Microsoft
Industry: Computer software
Net worth: $58bn
Income: approx’ $1m
Education: The Lakeside School, an exclusive preparatory school, Harvard College
Previous appointments: Computer Centre Corporation, exploiting bugs in its software system in return for free time on the computers
First job: Writing a payroll programme for Information Sciences Inc
Big break: Securing rights to the operating system used in the IBM PC

A mother’s club table-top-sale provided the opening Bill Gates needed to launch his passion for code.

He was a teenage student at Lakeside School, an exclusive preparatory school, when the cash raised by local mothers was used to buy a new computer.

Gates took an immediate interest in programming the machine and he wrote his first program, a noughts and crosses game, on this computer.
Fascinated by computer code, he joined up with three fellow students to find bugs in software for Computer Center Corporation.

The four were hired in 1971 by Information Sciences Inc. to write a payroll program, for which they received royalties. His success was noted by the school’s heads and Gates was commissioned to write a program for student schedules in classes.

He enrolled at Harvard College in 1973. Just two years later he had developed a version of BASIC with friends, which they sold to the makers of the first microcomputer.

Gates dropped out of Harvard with Paul Allen to realise the pair’s dream of starting their own computer software company. A company that they named Microsoft and set up office in Albuquerque.

During Microsoft's early years, Gates oversaw the business details, but continued to write code. He personally reviewed every line of code the company sold, and often rewrote parts of it.

A key moment occurred in 1980 when Microsoft was asked to write code for the IBM PC.

Gates discovered IBM needed an operating system as the original supplier had failed to negotiate a deal on time. He suggested using a model from a machine similar to the PC, produced by Seattle Computer Products.

Seattle agreed to allow Microsoft to become the exclusive licensing agent of its 86-DOS system, and later sold it on to Gates. The system was easily adapted for the PC, and IBM paid a one-time fee of $50,000 to Microsoft. Gates’ insistence that Microsoft should keep the copyright of system was a crucial move. He cleverly anticipated that other computer manufacturers would attempt to clone the IBM system.

Subsequent sales of MS DOS made Microsoft a major industry force. Microsoft launched its first retail version of Windows in 1985. From Microsoft's launch in 1975 until 2006, Gates introduced a wide range of products that have gone on to become huge commercial successes. The Windows operating system is now synonymous with the PC platform and has achieved market saturation.

He was number one on the Forbes 400 list from 1993 through to 2007 and number one on Forbes list of ‘The World’s Richest People’ from 1995 to 2007.

Gates stepped down from his position as executive chairman in 2008 after announcing he planned to give his wealth away to charity.

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