Who is Bill Gates?

What is it like to be the richest man in the world, a man whose wealth at one point exceeded $100 billion, according to Forbes magazine? And what is it like to give a huge portion of this wealth to charities and good works the world over? Bill Gates, perhaps the capitalist’s capitalist, founded a company that revolutionized every aspect of business, education, communication and entertainment, yet maintains a relatively low profile considering his personal and business success.

There are some, including the European Union and a number of state attorneys general, who would say Gates and Microsoft are monopolists and control too much of the personal computer and Internet world. Further, there are those who would complain that Gates was late coming to philanthropy-not really understanding or willing to take an active, charitable role until his wife Melinda brought him around during a trip to Africa.

However he is viewed-admired or not-he is still a hero to millions, because he made information and technology available for a relatively low price. He is a master of business acumen, inspiring tens of thousands to form their own companies and to attempt to take technology and computing to new levels of sophistication and service.

What made him Businessman?

This is not a rags-to-riches, but a riches-to-riches story. Bill Gates comes from a wealthy Seattle family, his father a prominent attorney and his mother a bank board member. There is one story, hard to verify, that Gates’ father set up a million dollar trust fund for him the year he was born. Gates at various times has denied this story; however, he certainly cannot deny that he had the best in private education, including 3 years at Harvard.

“He never graduated, instead choosing to go into business with Paul Allen and others to form a company devoted to software development. The year 1975 was indeed a very good year.”

Gates and his associates developed BASIC software for a company called Altair; from this point on, there was no looking back. A big concern to Gates and Allen was that much of the software that was available-used by amateurs and others-was open sourced, meaning that it was produced and distributed for free. Gates objected to this and to the random pirating of his work. He called for a closed source approach to software, meaning that the work and end product were intellectual products that had monetary value. If you want his version of BASIC, you should pay for it. (This very theme continues to haunt software developers, movie producers, singing artists and publishers, and it has become increasingly easy and popular to take from the Internet or other sources rather than pay for the content.)

The real bonanza lay just ahead: a relationship with IBM. At the time, most operating software was written for a particular platform or machine. If you created a new computer, you had to write software specifically for that machine. Using licensed software, Gates and Allen delivered to IBM an operating system for their first major microcomputer. But the real stroke of genius came when Gates realized that the IBM system would be just the first of dozens of competitors; rather than limit his business relationship to IBM, Microsoft was willing to license its MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) to a variety of computer manufacturers-at that time and in the years that followed, there were many such manufacturers, though most did not survive.

Gates, and Microsoft’s success in operating systems would be challenged by a new breed of developers who came up with the graphical user interface-a system particularly successful at Apple, which became the standard in the industry. Compared to DOS, the resulting Windows was a user’s delight, although early versions were subpar when compared to Apple and others. But, as is always the case with Gates, Microsoft did not sit back, but came out with repeated improvements and, of course, all those licenses to the various manufacturers, which ensured installation in millions of computers each year.

Gates, while less and less involved in the day-to-day operations of Microsoft, continues to lead the company to new frontiers, including playstations, I nternet-enabling software and plans to compete with the fabulously popular iPod from Apple.

The Legacy of Bill Gates

How will the world remember our hero Bill Gates? Until recently, we would have thought of him as a captain of industry, ranked with Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie. We would have thought of him as dynamic, rich and famously creative as he expanded Microsoft’s reach into the worlds of computing and the Internet. But we would not have thought of him as a generous, giving man.

Much of Gates’ current fame must be shared with his wife, Melinda. It is her awareness and her social concern that have prodded the man to participate fully in the modern world. Perhaps it was their combined efforts that attracted Warren Buffett to make much of his huge fortune available through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

While much is to be said for his and his foundation’s efforts, there are some who point out that he lives in a fabulously expensive and expansive house outside Seattle, and that he is one of the most influential people in contemporary America. There are those who credit his wealth and influence to vicious, almost ruthless business practices (a pattern that was long ago set by Rockefeller and others, who cleaned up their reputations with huge grants of money to charity and the arts).

Certainly a great deal of praise was heaped on Gates when he created his foundation in 2000 with an initial gift of $106 million (small peanuts, many said at the time, considering the overall wealth of the man). Subsequent funding has increased rapidly, as has Gates’ fame and reputation. The foundation emphasizes scholarships to minorities, AIDS prevention and efforts to eradicate such diseases as polio, diphtheria, measles and yellow fever-diseases that have been controlled in the Western world for many years.

The foundation has grown to over $26 billion and must give away at least 5 percent of its assets each year in order to continue as a charitable organization. (This amount does not include the recent announcement by Warren Buffett that he would give most of his accumulated wealth to the foundation.)

The foundation and his charitable works will ensure that Bill Gates will long be remembered for something more than his aggressive business tactics and great wealth.

Courtesy

To learn more about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, visit www.gatesfoundation.org for a complete profile of the foundation and its charitable works.

There are many books about Gates, Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Bill Gates, Lerner Publications, 2005, is one of the most recent. Visit www.bamesandnoble.com for additional information.