
What Bill Gates was doing at 20 years old - Jaruzel
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/29/what-microsoft-billionaire-bill-gates-was-doing-at-20-years-old.html
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shubhamjain
I have always wondered how significant was Paul Allen's contribution to
Microsoft? He quit in 1982. I admit that was after the watershed deal with
IBM, but Bill Gates lead the company to create Windows, Office, and Xbox; from
128 employees to 39,000+ [1]. Was he just lucky to be friend with a relentless
business genius?

[1]:
[https://www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company....](https://www.thocp.net/companies/microsoft/microsoft_company.htm)

~~~
betocmn
We will never know. Accordingly to Paul himself, he was the one with the grand
vision. The title he chose for his book is hilariously confronting: "Idea
Man".

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Moodles
Does anyone know what proportion of those who drop out of Harvard to make
their own companies actually succeed? I suspect we only hear of the success
stories of Gates, Zuckerberg, etc. But it would be interesting to know the
facts.

~~~
davidwihl
Harvard, unlike some other Ivies such as Columbia, let's you take time off
your degree without penalty to explore ventures and other ideas. So the ones
who don't succeed may have simply returned to Harvard to complete their
degrees. It is a multiclass, not binary, classification problem.

~~~
Moodles
Makes sense. I am, and I'm sure many other people are too, guilty of modifying
how risky and brave a story is afterwards. E.g. "I turned down these job
offers to risk it all for this one venture" when in reality the other job
offers would have waited a few weeks while you build options. I suspect
telling yourself these kinds of stories probably helps boost your own
confidence too.

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dogma1138
It’s amusing that someone still thinks that Microsoft or a Billionaire are a
needed descriptors in a title about Bill Gates.

~~~
wonton2
I had this game with my friends where you are supposed to guess who you are
(name on a note on your forehead). I wrote Bill Gates on a note, thinking that
would be easy, and none of them knew who he was before i explained it. They
are not stupid people and all of them have higher education. Just none of them
in a technical field, also not americans.

~~~
thaumasiotes
In contrast, the Chinese high school students I met who signed up for free
low-quality English lessons did know who Bill Gates was, though they didn't
know the name "Microsoft".

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daniel_iversen
Whoa, what is the name of that cool looking retro computer in the photo? Many
old cheap early micro computers had absolutely terrible keyboards (apart from
some of the later very successful ones like the commodores etc) as far as I
remember, but that one looks very nice!

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JustSomeNobody
> ... retro computer in the photo...

I don't think it was retro when the photo was taken.

~~~
andai
You don't-think correct!

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crispyporkbites
> Gates and Allen both admitted later that they had lied and told MITS that
> they already had a version of BASIC for the Altair when they hadn't yet
> written the software. "We had nothing," Allen told CBS' 60 Minutes in an
> interview.

> But by the time the audacious pair met with MITS in New Mexico two months
> later, their programming language was ready.

> After selling that software to MITS, both Gates and Allen took jobs with the
> company in Albuquerque at the end of 1975, while also forming their own
> partnership, then called "Micro-Soft."

It seems even 40 years ago the only way to get ahead was to "hustle" and
"growth hack". I wonder if Elizabeth Holmes also took inspiration from here...

~~~
mseebach
The hustle was getting the meeting, by the time they actually sold the
software, it existed and worked.

I really, _really_ , struggle to see anything wrong with that.

~~~
coldtea
Well, it might also have not worked (e.g. someone sells a client software they
don't yet have, hoping to build it in the meantime before the delivery, but
fails to finish it for whatever reason -- it might just take more time, or he
finds out he doesn't have the needed skills).

That would have made a client wait based on a lie ('we already have the
software') and depend of them (when the client could have gone shopping
elsewhere where they do have the software he needs), which could have cost
millions in damages (e.g. failure to get its products to market, because the
component he though he bought didn't actually exist when it was supposed to
delivered)...

~~~
taborj
MITS were not dependent on Gates and Allen for BASIC; MITS didn't even have
plans to have a BASIC interpreter. They were approached by Gates and Allen out
of the blue, and had no contract in place If they had not delivered, it
wouldn't have set MITS back at all, though it certainly would have not helped
sell more Altairs. MITS would have (likely was) free to entertain offers from
other entities.

~~~
coldtea
MITS might not have been.

But parent said they can't see anything bad with the behavior (lying about
having something you don't have, to make a sell, and rushing to actually make
it before the delivery deadline).

And it's something that can surely have bad (to very bad) results -- if you
fail to make it, or if you make something sub par to what you promised.

------
dboreham
How to become rich:

Start out rich.

~~~
bluedevil2k
That's incredibly naive. That completely devalues the hard work and genius of
Bill Gates. Being rich had nothing to do with him spending the better part of
his teens at the local university, working on their computer. Being rich had
nothing to do with him selling his BASIC to MITS (Remember, he was hiding the
fact that he was a student). Being rich had nothing to do with him selling an
OS to IBM.

Your comment comes off as petty, and an excuse that unsuccessful people use to
explain why they too aren't billionaires.

~~~
bluedino
_In 1968, the mothers of students in the school held a fundraiser so that they
could purchase computer time on a mainframe DEC PDP-10, owned by General
Electric. Both of the boys were very good with computers and programming.
Gates and Allen contributed to the majority of use of all of the allowed
computer time because they both enjoyed it so much. Because of how much time
they had been using up on the computer, Lakeside made an agreement with
Computer Center Corporation (CCC) so they could continue to provide computer
time to their students.

...

However by 1970, CCC had gone bankrupt, which meant that the boys had to find
another place to continue to work with computers. Luckily, Allen’s father
worked at the University of Washington, so they gained access to computers
there._

~~~
bluedevil2k
But what about all the other kids who didn't use the time? They had the same
privilege and wealth and never created a software empire. Or, maybe, there
were hundreds/thousands of kids around the country that had access at that
time and Gates/Allen were some of the few that had the inner drive and
competitive spirit to excel at it.

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jhoechtl
Im this case I would also ask what where his parents doing when Bill Gates was
ten.

I don't know for the US but performing well is very much a question of
heritage and ancestry.

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draugadrotten
At 20 years old, Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates was living the privileged
life of a rich white kid. His father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother
served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the
United Way. Gates' maternal grandfather was JW Maxwell, a national bank
president.

If anything, the story about Bill Gates shows that your own success will
change your childrens' future.

~~~
tuna-piano
Re “rich white kid”

I understand being rich is relevant to this conversation.

But how is him being white relevant? You seem to imply that a white persons
accomplishments are less meaningful, solely because they are white.

This feels like casual racism to me, which I don’t think should be acceptable
in this type of discussion.

~~~
acdha
> But how is him being white relevant? You seem to imply that a white persons
> accomplishments are less meaningful, solely because they are white.

You have the relationship backwards: being white meant no barriers. He never
showed up for a meeting to be pointed at the back door or asked whether he was
there to apply for the job as janitor or security guard. Nobody assumed he was
there to take notes. He didn’t face constant questions about whether he could
actually do something or was just “the diversity hire”.

That’s huge, especially when you look at the stats for things like loan or VC
approval rates. Starting a company as a white man isn’t easy but it’s still
easier than what most other people have to do.

~~~
meri_dian
You have it backwards, the "no barriers" mainly came from being wealthy. I'll
give a small anecdote: One of my friends is from a very wealthy family. He is
a person of color. He was still able to gain admission to an elite boarding
school, now works for a prestigious company, is respected by his peers, etc.

Privilege mainly comes from wealth. Of course it is a serious problem in
society when certain groups have disproportionate poverty or less wealth,
because that indicates some structural cause.

However in the modern day that cause is simply the fact that most people,
regardless of skin color, do not move out of their parents' income decile. And
when one group is already more economically disenfranchised than other groups,
then that economic disenfranchisement will perpetuate itself.

~~~
maxerickson
A recent study found that black men from rich families had notably different
outcomes than white men from rich families:

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-c...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-
class-white-and-black-men.html)

~~~
jazzyk
Replace "black men from rich families" with "second-generation Italian-
Americans from rich families" and you get the same result.

This is not about race, this is about belonging to a small network of Brahmin
aristocracy in the US. For example, some people in New England will never
invest in your startup (no matter how good it is), if your name does not look
like "Landon Jefferson Bayard, III", or some such.

 _Even if you are white_.

~~~
jjeaff
>Replace "black men from rich families" with "second-generation Italian-
Americans from rich families" and you get the same result.

I highly doubt it.

There has been racism against lots of minority groups in the US, but few rise
to the hundreds of years long legacy that exists to this day that is racism
against African Americans.

~~~
acdha
Additionally, there’s the question of passing: it’s much easier to blend in
with a higher status group with similar melanin levels - pick up some clothes,
learn some cultural signifiers, etc. That’s just not possible for someone with
the disfavored skin color. Even a black kid raised by adoptive parents can’t
avoid things like worrying every time they see a police officer.

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jlebrech
omg that TRS-80 wish someone make a modern day one, for raspberry-pi

