The man behind Microsoft needs no introduction but we will give him one anyway! Bill Gates revolutionized the use of personal computers in the ’80s and ’90s, gaining global fame and a truly unimaginable level of wealth.
But behind the charitable persona is a man who wears many hats. From a father to a CEO to a husband, Bill excels at it all. Though like most people Gates also seems to have a few skeletons hiding in the closet, the biggest one being Apple Inc!
Baby Bill
Bill Gates was born William Henry Gates III in Seattle, Washington, on October 28, 1955. His parents, William H. Gates Sr. and Mary Maxwell had three children: Gates has an older sister, Kristianne, and a younger sister, Libby.
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Both of his parents had successful careers and were keen for their young son to grow up and achieve his dreams. Little did they know that his dreams and ambitions would exceed even their wildest imaginations, and change all of our lives forever.
Like Father, Like Son
Both Gates’ parents were successful in their own fields. His mother, Mary Maxwell, was a businesswoman and bank executive. She served on the University of Washington Board of Regents from 1975 to 1993. Gates’ father, William H. Gates Sr., was an attorney.
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Gates Sr. had high hopes for his only son and was keen for him to follow in his footsteps and become a successful lawyer. The young Gates looked up to his father and wanted to make him proud—but his life would end up taking a different path.
Showing Promise
From an early age, it was clear that the young Gates had a natural affinity for computers. He loved playing around with technology, always looking for new ways to create and innovate. Astonishing his parents and teachers, Gates wrote his first software program at the tender age of 13.
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In high school, Gates was also part of a group that digitized the school payroll system. It also developed a program called Traf-O-Data, a system for counting traffic. This system was sold to local governments—pretty impressive for a high school project!
Smooth Coder
One funny anecdote from Gates’ earlier career as a young programmer while in high school, was he wrote computer code for a program that scheduled classes for all the students.
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The young Gates used this to his full advantage. As a teenager, he was not known for being great at talking to girls—but he rigged up the scheduling program so that he was placed in several all-girls classes. “It wasn’t that I could talk to them or anything,” Gates laughed to the BBC. “But they were there.”
Pushing the Boundaries
Gates admits that he was a pretty rebellious kid when he was growing up, refusing to follow his parents’ rules. “I was a bit disruptive,” he said. “I started, early on, sort of questioning—were their rules logical, and always to be followed?
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“So there was a tiny bit of tension there, as I was kind of pushing back… By the time I was 14 I got over that, which is good because then they were very supportive as I started to really engage in writing software and learning different computer things.”
Most helpful Friends
Throughout Gates’ childhood and adolescence, even though his difficult years where he pushed against his parents’ authority, there was one constant he could rely on: his best friend Paul Allen.
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Allen was two years older than Gates, but that didn’t stop the two forming an unshakable bond. Allen even wrote about their friendship in an essay in his senior year of high school. “We fit together very well,” he wrote.
Staying Focused
As Gates and Allen continued to experiment with computer programming, impressing everyone around them with their skill and ingenuity, they wanted to start up their own company straight out of high school.
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The two of them were raring to go, but Gates’ parents weren’t so keen. They didn’t want their son to drop out of high school without a diploma. They appreciated his ambition, but they encouraged him to finish high school and go to college and follow his father into a career in law.
Big Dreams
Gates heeded his parents’ wishes and headed to Harvard University in Boston in 1973. He took a pre-law major, but he quickly shifted his focus to mathematics and computer science.
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Allen was working near Boston as a programmer for Honeywell, and the two of them continued to work on their software development. In 1975, Gates called MITS, the maker of the world’s first PCs, from his dorm room. He pitched his and Allen’s software idea, and the company took him on.
Dropping Out
Gates took time off from college to work with Allen on developing the PCs for MITS. Together, they worked on an Altair emulator running on a minicomputer, and then the BASIC interpreter.
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Around this time, the two of them decided to name their partnership “Micro-Soft”, a combination of “microcomputer” and “software”. The project was so successful that Gates never returned to Harvard. He wasn’t exactly your standard dropout, however—he knew that he was on the cusp of something great.
Onto Something Big
Gates and Allen then set up their own office in Albuquerque and began working together full time. They dropped the hyphen from their company name, and Gates registered “Microsoft” as a trademark.
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The two of them set to work developing new software, writing and rewriting varieties of computer code. They knew they were onto something big, but the rest of the computing world wasn’t exactly convinced right away.
The Doubters
Gates’ and Allen’s ultimate ambition was to make a personal computer that would be so wide-reaching, you would see one in every home and on every desktop. In the 70s, this what a pretty tall order, with personal computers being pretty enormous machines, basically taking up a whole room.
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They were also incredibly expensive, and no one really could afford computers apart from large businesses and the government. People scoffed at the young developers’ dream, but they didn’t listen to the doubters—and went on to make history.
Huge Success
Microsoft quickly began to make a name for itself as an innovative company, with tough but focused creators at the helm. In 1979, Gates and Allen moved their headquarters from Albuquerque to Bellevue, Washington. The company quickly took off from there—in 1980, they licensed one of their operating systems, MS-DOS, to computer giant IBM.
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And it wasn’t just computing that Gates and Allen had a sharp sense for. They made the incredibly smart move to retain the right to license the system to other companies—meaning that they were free to continue taking over the world.
A Bite of the Apple
Around this time, Gates was also working on some shared projects with Steve Jobs, the creator of Apple. Gates compared the visual interfaces of Apple and Microsoft and came to the conclusion that Apple’s graphic display was more user-friendly.
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It showed text and images together and powered by mouse usage, was easier to understand than his keyboard-based MS-DOS. Inspired by Apple’s user-friendly and graphic image-based display, Gates started expanding his plans for Microsoft even more.
Making Windows Up
Gates would show an impressive skill in yet another field—advertising. He knew that users were keener to Apple’s graphic interface, but it would be a while before Microsoft would be able to offer their customers the same thing.
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Gates launched a marketing campaign hyping up a new system from Microsoft that was currently in development. This system was called “Windows”, and he knew it could be a huge hit. There was just one problem—they weren’t developing any such system.
Frenemies
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs both became huge names in the computing world. Their parallel successes led to many people speculating that there was some sort of feud between them. It is true that the two were rivals of sorts, but Gates revealed that they were in fact friends.
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“Steve and I actually stayed in touch fairly well,” he said in an interview with Rolling Stone. “We had a couple of good, long conversations in the last year, about our wives, about life, about what technology achieved or had not achieved.”
Global Empire
By 1983, Gates’ and Allen’s home-sprung company had expanded across the globe. Microsoft now had a truly global reach and had offices in countries such as the United Kingdom and Japan.
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At this time, Microsoft had over 30% of the world’s computers running on its software. It was at this time, at the height of the company’s success, that Allen announced he was stepping down from the company, due to struggling with health issues.
Open Windows
Almost two years after Gates first announced the development of Windows, the program finally launched in November 1985. This was followed in 1989 by Microsoft Office, which contained applications such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel.
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Microsoft Excel especially was revolutionary in its time, as it was the first and only spreadsheet program that allowed users to edit and adapt the appearance of their data. Today, Windows and Microsoft Office are used by over a whopping 1 billion people worldwide.
Windows 95
Windows 95 was launched in 1995 and featured even more advanced software systems than its previous versions. Certain components introduced in Windows 95 came to define the Windows user interface forever, such as the Start button and taskbar.
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“If you look at Windows 95, it was a quantum leap in difference in technological capability and stability,” said Neil MacDonald, an analyst for leading technology research and advisory company Gartner. Even today, Windows 95 is considered one of the greatest developments of the 20th Century.
End Game
Having taken over the software world, it appeared that Microsoft could not reach any greater heights. However, this was before the debut of the now-legendary gaming system, Xbox, in 2001.
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In 2019, Xbox’s worldwide revenue was a whopping $11.4 billion. This may seem like an astonishing amount, but to put it in perspective, this is less than 10% of Microsoft’s total revenue.
End of an Era
In 2000, Gates announced to the world that he would be stepping down as the CEO of Microsoft. He confirmed that he would be staying on as chief software architect, but the CEO role would now be going to Steve Ballmer.
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Ballmer was a good friend of Gates, having attended Harvard with him back in their college days, and worked at Microsoft for many years. It was the end of an era for Gates, but his future had even more exciting adventures in store.
More Change
For the next eight years, Gates remained at Microsoft as the chief software architect, providing valuable insight into the multi-billion-dollar corporation. In 2008, he stepped down from the CSA position but remained on the team as chairman of the Microsoft board.
Then, in 2014, he stepped down from that role too, staying on the board but in a less high-profile position. He then began serving as a technology adviser. All these changes over the years were in part due to Gates’ desire to focus on his personal life and have more of a “normal” routine at home with his family.
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Work Ethic
Gates made these gradual changes to his role within Microsoft as an attempt to slowly dial down the intensity of his workload. Throughout his career, Gates built up a reputation as an incredibly disciplined worker.
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Sometimes pulling all-nighters and 7-day work weeks. “I worked weekends,” he admitted to the BBC. “I didn’t really believe in vacations.” Gates’ work ethic clearly paid off, creating one of the most successful software companies in the world.
Wedding Bells
Gates married his wife Melinda (nee French) in 1994. French herself was also a pretty accomplished computer genius—she has an MBA and a bachelor’s degree in computer science.
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In fact, they met at Microsoft, because French was working there at the time! “I was willing in my twenties and most of my thirties to say the job was the centre of my life,” Gates admitted. “Therefore I wasn’t going to get married or have kids. But I knew that eventually, I wanted to, and she arrived at kind of the perfect time, and we fell in love.”
The Next Generation
Bill and Melinda Gates have been married for almost thirty years, and the strength and positivity of their relationship is an inspiration to us all. It must be a lot of strain managing one of the world’s biggest companies, but they clearly keep each other grounded and with a level head.
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The couple has three children together—Jennifer, born 1996, Rory, born 1999, and Phoebe, the youngest, born in 2002. The children of such incredibly wealthy parents must have everything they want in life—but Bill and Melinda Gates are actually careful to give them a normal life.
Keeping it Real
Gates has spoken openly about how he doesn’t want his children to grow up with so much excessive wealth that they have no concept of the value of money and working for themselves.
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“Leaving kids massive amounts of money is not a favour to them,” Gates once said in a Q&A with Reddit. Gates plans to leave his children around $10 million each, which—to mere mortals—certainly qualifies as “massive amounts of money”, but considering his fortune is almost $100 billion in total, it sounds quite modest!
Dream Home
However, Gates’ keenness to keep his children grounded hasn’t stopped him raising them in an amazing legendary mansion. The Gates family live in “Xanadu 2.0”, an enormous estate overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, Washington.
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The complex sprawls over a massive 66,000 square feet and features loads of technological and architectural innovations. It also contains a 1,000-square foot dining room and a 60-foot swimming pool with an underwater music system.
Marriage Matters
But it takes more than a multi-million-dollar house complex to keep a marriage happy. Whatever your level of wealth, a healthy and strong relationship always takes work.
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This is partly why Gates decided to reduce his workload, so he could spend some more time with this family and enjoy their life together. “I said, ‘Yeah, I want to change my priorities,’” he said to the BBC. “And you know, we actually take quite a few vacations. I’m sure myself in my twenties would look at my schedule now and find it very wimpy indeed.”
Stand by Your Man
And it can’t have been easy for Melinda Gates at times, being married to one of the most well-known and high-profile businessmen in the world. At times, the pressures of fame, his high workload and the number of people depending on him must have felt quite overwhelming.
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Nonetheless, Gates’ wife has stuck by him through thick and thin, and the couple has been married for almost thirty years. “Love is the most powerful and underused force for change in the world,” she wrote in her book “The Moment of Lift. “For me, love is an effort to help others flourish.”
Charitable Giving
And as well as within their marriage, Bill and Melinda Gates live by that mantra in other areas of their lives. The two of them are passionate about giving back to the world and using their great wealth and influence to help others.
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Together the two of them founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, dedicated to helping people around the world, particularly improving global health and education. The foundation has installed 47,000 computers in libraries across America, and funded tuition for 20,000 college students.
Travel Bug
In 2017, Gates continued his quest to improve the lives of people around the world, with a visit to Tanzania as part of the Foundation. “The foundation is working with a number of partners in Tanzania and elsewhere, including GAIN, UNICEF and Johns Hopkins University to tackle issues around undernutrition in the country,” he wrote in a piece for CNBC Africa.
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“The foundation works with partners in more than 45 African countries to reduce poverty and improve health. Some of the major areas of investment include agriculture, child health and nutrition, family planning and financial services for the poor.”
Bill and TED
As well his numerous charitable projects and donations, Gates also likes to give back in another way—by providing inspiration to others. Gates has delivered a number of TED talks over the years, where he has spoken passionately about a variety of issues.
Screenshot from “The next outbreak? We’re not ready” via TED
Some of his topics have included “Why giving away our wealth has been the most satisfying thing we’ve done”, “Mosquitos, malaria and education”, and “How we must respond to the coronavirus pandemic”. TED described Gates as “a passionate techie and a shrewd businessman… with his own style of philanthropy and passion for innovation.”
Looking to the Future
When we look at all of the incredible achievements Bill Gates has amassed over the years, there’s really only one question left to ask—what’s next? With anyone else, you’d be forgiven for thinking he probably would just simply like to retire, enjoy his wealth and success, and quite simply have a well-earned rest!
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But we don’t think resting is on the cards for Bill Gates anytime soon. This computing powerhouse, esteemed philanthropist, and family man is an inspiration to us all and has no plans of stopping.