Bill Gates

Bill Gates

William Henry Gates III or as known as Bill Gates was born on 28 October 1955, in Seattle, Washington. As the principal founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates is one of the most influential and richest people on the planet. Recent estimates of his wealth put it at US$84.2 billion (Jan. 2017); this is the equivalent of the combined GDP of several African economies. In recent years he has retired from working full time at Microsoft, and has instead concentrated on working with his charitable foundation “The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation".

Early life of Bill Gates

His father William Gates Sr was a senior lawyer, and his mother, Mary, served as an executive for a major bank. The family were wealthy but, remembering the challenges of the Great Depression, they encouraged their children to work hard and take nothing for granted.

Aged 13, Gates attended the private Lakeside school. It was here that Gates had his first introduction to computers. He taught himself to programme in Basic, making a simple ‘Tic-Tac-Toe’ game. Gates enjoyed the process of working with computers and arranged with a company Computer Center Corporation (CCC) to spend time on their computers – learning source code, such as Fortran, Machine Code and Lisp.

In 1973, Gates enrolled at Harvard, where he studied mathematics and computer science. However, Gates was more interested in pursuing his own coding, and when he saw an opportunity to found his own company, he dropped out of Harvard without finishing his course.

Bill Gates and Microsoft

In 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen formed Micro-Soft, a blend of "micro-computer" and "software" (they dropped the hyphen to Microsoft within a year). Although the company started out on shaky footing, by 1979 Microsoft was grossing approximately $2.5 million, and, at the age of 23, Gates placed himself as the head of the company. With his acumen for software development and a keen business sense, he led the company and worked as its spokesperson. Gates personally reviewed every line of code the company shipped, often rewriting code himself when he saw it necessary. 

Following the development of software for IBM, between 1979 and 1981 Microsoft's growth exploded. Staff increased from 25 to 128, and revenue shot up from $2.5 million to $16 million. In mid-1981, Gates and Allen incorporated Microsoft, and Gates was appointed president and chairman of the board. Allen was named executive vice president.

Bill Gates and Microsoft

In early January 2008, during the opening ceremony of the Consumer Electronics Show, Bill said that by the beginning of July he is going to leave Microsoft. He announced that from now he is putting all his efforts into Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which main objective is to support projects in education and health care.

Since the end of June, 2008, Gates has retired from an active management at Microsoft. He gave his authority to Steve Ballmer, at the same time extending a zone of responsibility for Craig Mundie and Ray Ozzie. This trio now determines the course of the company. Despite of this, Bill Gates is still a chairman of the Board of Directors (but non-executive), and remains the largest shareholder, with 6.4 percent of the common stock.

On February 04, 2014 Bill Gates decided to resign as the Chairman of the Board and will work directly with the new CEO Satya Nadella as an advisor on technology. Thus, Gates will directly affect the operation of Microsoft, but at the same time is deprived of the post of the Chairman, which he held since 1981.

"If you can't make it good, at least make it look good"

- Bill Gates

Source : 
https://www.biographyonline.net/business/bill-gates.html
https://www.biography.com/people/bill-gates-9307520
https://astrumpeople.com/bill-gates-biography/