Bill Gates, technologist, philanthropist and business leader, co-founded Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975, pioneering the vision of personal technology ubiquity.
After leading Microsoft for decades, Gates transitioned his focus to philanthropy.
Co-chairing the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with Melinda French Gates, they work to improve global health and education.
Notably, they pledged $10 billion towards vaccines and launched a $5.5 billion effort to eradicate polio.
Furthermore, Gates Foundation equipped 95% of libraries across the US with internet-accessible computers.
Bill Gates also participates in several personal initiatives like TerraPower for nuclear energy, the Giving Pledge and Breakthrough Energy Coalition for clean energy.
His book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster,” showcases his commitment to preventing climate change.
Despite his efforts in tackling global challenges, he maintains an advisory role at Microsoft.
See also: Jack Ma Quotes and Tim Ferriss Quotes.
In this article, I have selected the best quotes by Bill Gates.
Top Bill Gates Quotes on Business & Success
1. “To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks.” ~ (Bill Gates).
2. “I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one.” ~ (Bill Gates).
3. “Patience is a key element of success.” ~ (Bill Gates).
4. “If you are born poor its not your mistake, but if you die poor its your mistake.” ~ (Bill Gates).
5. “Don’t compare yourself with anyone in this world. If you do so, you are insulting yourself.” ~ (Bill Gates).
6. “Life is not fair. Get used to it.” ~ (Bill Gates).
7. “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” ~ (Bill Gates).
8. “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” ~ (Bill Gates).
9. “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” ~ (Bill Gates).
10. “If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.” ~ (Bill Gates).
11. “Only through focus can you do world-class things, no matter how capable you are.” ~ (Bill Gates).
12. “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.” ~ (Bill Gates).
13. “Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.” ~ (Bill Gates).
14. “We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.” ~ (Bill Gates).
15. “It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” ~ (Bill Gates).
16. “As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.” ~ (Bill Gates).
17. “If your business is not on the Internet, then your business will be out of business.” ~ (Bill Gates).
18. “People cannot become truly knowledgeable without being excellent readers.” ~ (Bill Gates).
19. “If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.” ~ (Bill Gates).
20. “Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.” ~ (Bill Gates).
21. “I work hard because I love my work.” ~ (Bill Gates).
22. “We’re changing the world with technology.” ~ (Bill Gates).
23. “Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering.” ~ (Bill Gates).
24. “Success today requires the agility and drive to constantly rethink, reinvigorate, react, and reinvent.” ~ (Bill Gates).
25. “I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time. But many others were also in the same place. The difference was that I took action.” ~ (Bill Gates).
26. “Banking is necessary – banks are not.” ~ (Bill Gates).
27. “A breakthrough in machine learning would be worth ten Microsofts.” ~ (Bill Gates).
28. “I am not in competition with anyone but myself. My goal is to improve myself continuously.” ~ (Bill Gates).
29. “To be a good professional engineer, always start to study late for exams because it teaches you how to manage time and tackle emergencies.” ~ (Bill Gates).
30. “I am not a topper in my university but all toppers are working in my Microsoft company.” ~ (Bill Gates).
31. “Leaders are those who empower others.” ~ (Bill Gates).
32. “Innovation is moving at a scarily fast pace.” ~ (Bill Gates).
33. “Investing in tomorrow’s technology today is more critical than ever…” ~ (Bill Gates).
34. “Customers want high quality at low prices and they want it now.” ~ (Bill Gates).
35. “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.” ~ (Bill Gates).
36. “Software is the magic thing whose importance only goes up over time.” ~ (Bill Gates).
37. “Automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” ~ (Bill Gates).
38. “If I only had two dollars left I would spend one dollar on PR.” ~ (Bill Gates).
39. “The most meaningful way to differentiate your company from your competition, is to do an outstanding job with information.” ~ (Bill Gates).
40. “Legacy is a stupid thing! I don’t want a legacy.” ~ (Bill Gates).
Best Bill Gates Quotes
41. “I believe innovation is the most powerful force for change in the world.” ~ (Bill Gates).
42. “Bringing together the right information with the right people will dramatically improve a company’s ability to develop and act on strategic business opportunities.” ~ (Bill Gates).
43. “Common Core is a big win for education.” ~ (Bill Gates).
44. “While we’re all very dependent on technology, it doesn’t always work.” ~ (Bill Gates).
45. “My grade point average went from a 2.2 to a 4.0 over the summer. I wanted to get straight A’s. I decided to get straight A’s. I didn’t want people to think I was dumb. And when you get straight A’s once, its easier.” ~ (Bill Gates).
46. “The internet is just a passing fad.” ~ (Bill Gates).
47. “And knowledge management is a means, not an end.” ~ (Bill Gates).
48. “It is really gratifying, for example, to visit India now and see that because they’ve had good educational institutions, and they’ve had a focus on it, there are more and more people in India participating in the world economy.” ~ (Bill Gates).
49. “Vision without execution is daydreaming.” ~ (Bill Gates).
50. “I hope someday what people can do with their lives depends on their talents and how hard they are willing to work, rather than on where they happen to be born.” ~ (Bill Gates).
51. “The ability of a successful company to add functionality to its product has long been upheld.” ~ (Bill Gates).
52. “There is a difference between what technology enables and what historical business practices enable.” ~ (Bill Gates).
53. “Certain teams are more careful in what they write. They generate less bugs. You can know that but it still doesn’t mean there might be there might not be one bug that would be bad to ship the product with.” ~ (Bill Gates).
54. “The only definition by which America’s best days are behind it is on a purely relative basis.” ~ (Bill Gates).
55. “The first five years have so much to do with how the next 80 turn out.” ~ (Bill Gates).
56. “Creativity allows people to be effective.” ~ (Bill Gates).
57. “K to 12 is partly about babysitting the kids so the parents can do other things.” ~ (Bill Gates).
58. “Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.” ~ (Bill Gates).
59. “Microsoft was founded with a vision of a computer on every desk, and in every home. We’ve never wavered from that vision.” ~ (Bill Gates).
60. “I am results-oriented.” ~ (Bill Gates).
61. “If I was down to the last dollar of my marketing budget I’d spend it on PR!” ~ (Bill Gates).
62. “Our success has really been based on partnerships from the very beginning.” ~ (Bill Gates).
63. “The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.” ~ (Bill Gates).
64. “Convert bad news to good news.” ~ (Bill Gates).
65. “Treatment without prevention is simply unsustainable.” ~ (Bill Gates).
66. “How you gather, manage and use information will determine whether you win or lose.” ~ (Bill Gates).
67. “The fight against AIDS in China is already well underway. The Chinese government and other funders are providing major support, and they’ll continue to bear primary responsibility for delivering prevention and treatment.” ~ (Bill Gates).
68. “The world needs banking but it does not need banks.” ~ (Bill Gates).
69. “Well private money can take risks in a way that government money often isn’t willing to.” ~ (Bill Gates).
70. “The computer was born to solve problems that did not exist before.” ~ (Bill Gates).
Famous Bill Gates Quotes
71. “Long-term vision and product strategy.” ~ (Bill Gates).
72. “Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don’t think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other.” ~ (Bill Gates).
73. “Customer service will become the primary value-added function of every business.”
~ (Bill Gates).
74. “Never before in history has innovation offered promise of so much to so many in so short a time.” ~ (Bill Gates).
75. “There will be two types of businesses in the next 5 years, those that are on the Internet, and those that are out of business.” ~ (Bill Gates).
76. “Don’t tax my income, tax my consumption.” ~ (Bill Gates).
77. “It is my belief that industry and government around the world should work even more closely to protect the privacy and security of Internet users, and promote the exchange of ideas, while respecting legitimate government considerations.” ~ (Bill Gates).
78. “The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.” ~ (Bill Gates).
79. “If you want to build a great company, get the hell out of Silicon Valley.” ~ (Bill Gates).
80. “I don’t have a magic formula for prioritizing the world’s problems.” ~ (Bill Gates).
81. “The human body is the most complex system ever created. The more we learn about it, the more appreciation we have about what a rich system it is.” ~ (Bill Gates).
82. “No one will need more than 637Kb of memory for a personal computer.” ~ (Bill Gates).
83. “Humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity.” ~ (Bill Gates).
84. “Every day we were saying, ‘How can we keep this customer happy?’ How can we get ahead in innovation by doing this, because if we don’t, somebody else will.” ~ (Bill Gates).
85. “Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.” ~ (Bill Gates).
86. “Computers and games don’t waste time – people do.” ~ (Bill Gates).
87. “Bitcoin is a technological tour de force.” ~ (Bill Gates).
88. “I believe that with great wealth comes great responsibility, a responsibility to give back to society and a responsibility to see that those resources are put to work in the best possible way to help those most in need.” ~ (Bill Gates).
89. “The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don’t really even notice it, so it’s part of everyday life.” ~ (Bill Gates).
90. “My success, part of it certainly, is that I have focused in on a few things.” ~ (Bill Gates).
91. “Embrace bad news to learn where you need the most improvement.” ~ (Bill Gates).
92. “If you give people tools, and they use their natural abilities and their curiosity, they will develop things in ways that will surprise you very much beyond what you might have expected.” ~ (Bill Gates).
93. “A bad strategy will fail no matter how good your information is and lame execution will stymie a good strategy. If you do enough things poorly, you will go out of business.” ~ (Bill Gates).
94. “DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.” ~ (Bill Gates).
95. “Software is more important than hardware.” ~ (Bill Gates).
96. “Corruption is one of the most common reasons I hear in views that criticize aid.” ~ (Bill Gates).
97. “Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.” ~ (Bill Gates).
98. “The future of advertising is the Internet.” ~ (Bill Gates).
99. “I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts.” ~ (Bill Gates).
100. “Bridge is the king of all card games.” ~ (Bill Gates).
101. “The future of Windows is to let the computer see, listen, and even learn.” ~ (Bill Gates).
102. “There’s nobody getting rich writing software that I know of.” ~ (Bill Gates).
103. “If you believe that every life has equal value, it’s revolting to learn that some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not. We said to ourselves: “This can’t be true. But if it is true, it deserves to be the priority of our giving.”” ~ (Bill Gates).
104. “If you’re using first-class land for biofuels, then you’re competing with the growing of food. And so you’re actually spiking food prices by moving energy production into agriculture.” ~ (Bill Gates).
105. “Even though I only have a high-school degree, I’m a professional student.” ~ (Bill Gates).
106. “If your culture doesn’t like geeks, you are in real trouble.” ~ (Bill Gates).
107. “I have seen firsthand that agricultural science has enormous potential to increase the yields of small farmers and lift them out of hunger and poverty.” ~ (Bill Gates).
108. “People everywhere love Windows.” ~ (Bill Gates).
109. “The pace of progress in biology creates a foundation that naturally gets picked up by the biotech and pharmaceutical industry to solve rich-world diseases. This is attractive science. It’s science that people want to work on.” ~ (Bill Gates).
110. “The inventory, the value of my company, walks out the door every evening.” ~ (Bill Gates).
111. “Two out of every five people on Earth today owe their lives to the higher crop outputs that fertilizer has made possible.” ~ (Bill Gates).
112. “Innovation is a good thing. The human condition – put aside bioterrorism and a few footnotes – is improving because of innovation.” ~ (Bill Gates).
113. “If you take from the most wealthy and give to the least wealthy, it’s good. It starts to balance out.” ~ (Bill Gates).
114. “Depending on where you live, cooking, sex and pooping are either 3 of life’s pleasures or what kills you.” ~ (Bill Gates).
Inspiring Bill Gates Quotes
115. “We are not even close to finishing the basic dream of what the PC can be.” ~ (Bill Gates).
116. “We’re at the point now where the challenge isn’t how to communicate effectively with e-mail; it’s ensuring that you spend your time on the e-mail that matters most.” ~ (Bill Gates).
117. “When I was in college, for the games of that era, I was as hardcore as anyone was. I wouldn’t say I outgrew it, but you always have to have a finite number of addictions.” ~ (Bill Gates).
118. “I don’t generally read a lot of fiction.” ~ (Bill Gates).
119. “Headlines, in a way, are what mislead you because bad news is a headline, and gradual improvement is not.” ~ (Bill Gates).
120. “Philanthropy is fun and fulfilling.” ~ (Bill Gates).
121. “When you want to do your homework, fill out your tax return, or see all the choices for a trip you want to take, you need a full-size screen.” ~ (Bill Gates).
122. “3D is a way of organizing things, particularly as we’re getting much more media information on the computer, a lot more choices, a lot more navigation than we’ve ever had before.” ~ (Bill Gates).
123. “I definitely think leaving kids massive amounts of money is not a favor to them.” ~ (Bill Gates).
124. “Drones overall will be more impactful than I think people recognize, in positive ways to help society.” ~ (Bill Gates).
125. “I think any statement about stock prices is always suspect unless it’s made by Warren Buffett.” ~ (Bill Gates).
126. “A first-generation fortune is the most likely to be given away, but once a fortune is inherited it’s less likely that a very high percentage will go back to society.” ~ (Bill Gates).
127. “I’m not somebody who goes to church on a regular basis. The specific elements of Christianity are not something I’m a huge believer in.” ~ (Bill Gates).
128. “If you are low income in the United States, you have a higher chance of going to jail than getting a 4-year degree.” ~ (Bill Gates).
129. “There is a certain responsibility that accrued to me when I got to this unexpected position.” ~ (Bill Gates).
130. “Vaccination is one of the easiest things on the way to development. It’s much easier than roads and a great education system. It’s very basic. It’s one of the first things you want to get right.” ~ (Bill Gates).
131. “I don’t think you’re as capable of handling lack of sleep or whatever challenges you throw at your body as you get older. However, I never missed a day of work.” ~ (Bill Gates).
132. “I have a particular relationship with Vinod Khosla because he’s got a lot of very interesting science-based energy startups.” ~ (Bill Gates).
133. “The power of capitalism to mediate the gap between rich and poor is pretty incredible. Indeed, I think, year by year, the gap gets less.” ~ (Bill Gates).
134. “The Ebola epidemic can serve as an early warning wake-up call to get ready. If we start now, we can be ready for the next epidemic.” ~ (Bill Gates).
135. “The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” ~ (Bill Gates).
136. “Climate change is a terrible problem, and it absolutely needs to be solved. It deserves to be a huge priority.” ~ (Bill Gates).
137. “There are more people dying of malaria than any specific cancer.” ~ (Bill Gates).
138. “In order for the United States to do the right things for the long term, it appears to be helpful for us to have the prospect of humiliation. Sputnik helped us fund good science – really good science: the semiconductor came out of it.” ~ (Bill Gates).
139. “Stolen’s a strong word. It’s copyrighted content that the owner wasn’t paid for.” ~ (Bill Gates).
140. “Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There’s a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.” ~ (Bill Gates).
Short Bill Gates Quotes
141. “If I will start all over again I would choose network marketing.” ~ (Bill Gates).
142. “According to Ethiopian custom, parents wait to name a baby because children often die in the first weeks of life.” ~ (Bill Gates).
144. “Like a human being, a company has to have an internal communication mechanism, a “nervous system”, to coordinate its actions.” ~ (Bill Gates).
145. “I have been struck again and again by how important measurement is to improving the human condition.” ~ (Bill Gates).
146. “I get more spam than anyone I know.” ~ (Bill Gates).
147. “Nobody spends any money on smallpox unless they worry about a bio-terrorist recreating it.” ~ (Bill Gates).
148. “No one person controls Microsoft. The board and the shareholders decide whether they want to have me as CEO.” ~ (Bill Gates).
149. “Students deserve great teachers. And teachers deserve the support they need to become great.” ~ (Bill Gates).
150. “Two years from now, spam will be solved.” ~ (Bill Gates).
151. “I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one. And I’m still fanatical, but now I’m a little less fanatical.” ~ (Bill Gates).
152. “Africa is on the rise.” ~ (Bill Gates).
153. “The worst pandemic in modern history was the Spanish flu of 1918, which killed tens of millions of people. Today, with how interconnected the world is, it would spread faster.” ~ (Bill Gates).
154. “You can make money and you can make excuses, but you can never make money out of excuses.” ~ (Bill Gates).
155. “Since when has the world of computer software design been about what people want? This is a simple question of evolution. The day is quickly coming when every knee will bow down to a silicon fist, and you will all beg your binary gods for mercy.” ~ (Bill Gates).
156. “Teams should be able to act with the same unity of purpose and focus as a well-motivated individual.” ~ (Bill Gates).
Bill Gates Quotes for Motivation
157. “Who in their right mind would ever need more than 640k of ram!?” ~ (Bill Gates).
158. “Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.” ~ (Bill Gates).
159. “I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.” ~ (Bill Gates).
160. “Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping – they called it opportunity.”
~ (Bill Gates).
161. “I spend a lot of time reading.” ~ (Bill Gates).
162. “We’re all responsible for creating a polio-free world while we still can.” ~ (Bill Gates).
163. “We need to start thinking about the Future of Food if we are going to feed 9 billion people in a way that does not destroy our environment.” ~ (Bill Gates).
164. “You have a meeting to make a decision, not to decide on the question.” ~ (Bill Gates).
165. “Setting clear goals and finding measures that will mark progress toward them can improve the human condition.” ~ (Bill Gates).
166. “Learning to write programs stretches your mind, and helps you think better, creates a way of thinking about things that I think is helpful in all domains.” ~ (Bill Gates).
167. “The key for us, number one, has always been hiring very smart people.” ~ (Bill Gates).
168. “I believe that every life is valuable. That we can make things better. That innovation is the key to a bright future. That we’re just getting started.” ~ (Bill Gates).
169. “Whether I’m at the office, at home, or on the road, I always have a stack of books I’m looking forward to reading.” ~ (Bill Gates).
170. “Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs.” ~ (Bill Gates).
171. “It’s been proven that of all the interventions to reduce poverty, improving agricultural productivity is the best.” ~ (Bill Gates).
172. “Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player.” ~ (Bill Gates).
173. “The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity.” ~ (Bill Gates).
174. “Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering. When you finally get done and get to appreciate what you have done it is like a part of yourself that you’ve put together. I think a lot of the people here feel that way.” ~ (Bill Gates).
175. “An important re-engineering principle is that companies should focus on their core competence and outsource everything else.” ~ (Bill Gates).
176. “A company’s ability to respond to an unplanned event, good or bad is a prime indicator of its ability to compete.” ~ (Bill Gates).
177. “Life is a lot more fun if you treat its challenges in creative ways.” ~ (Bill Gates).
178. “Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not.” ~ (Bill Gates).
179. “Even for the very best programmers ah, sometimes you’ll see someone else’s program or somebody will come along and they’ll show you what can be done in a simpler way.” ~ (Bill Gates).
180. “The Wright Brothers created the single greatest cultural force since the invention of writing. The airplane became the first World Wide Web, bringing people, languages, ideas, and values together.” ~ (Bill Gates).
181. “I’m not a macroeconomics person.” ~ (Bill Gates).
182. “Certainly there’s a phenomenon around open source. You know free software will be a vibrant area. There will be a lot of neat things that get done there.” ~ (Bill Gates).
183. “The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity. To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see the impact. But complexity blocks all three steps.” ~ (Bill Gates).
184. “I believe innovation is the most powerful force for change in the world. People who are pessimistic about the future tend to extrapolate from the present in a straight line. But innovation fundamentally shifts the trajectory of development.” ~ (Bill Gates).
185. “Airplane travel is nature’s way of making you look like your passport photo.” ~ (Bill Gates).
186. “Reward worthy failure – Experimentation.” ~ (Bill Gates).
187. “I’m an investor in a number of biotech companies, partly because of my incredible enthusiasm for the great innovations they will bring.” ~ (Bill Gates).
188. “People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn’t they?” ~ (Bill Gates).
189. “What I do best is share my enthusiasm.” ~ (Bill Gates).
190. “Look At The Clock When You Are Sitting idle. But Never Look At The Clock When You Are Working.” ~ (Bill Gates).
191. “Everything on the internet is real god damn it!” ~ (Bill Gates).
192. “I can understand wanting to have a million dollars but once you get beyond that, I have to tell you, it’s the same hamburger.” ~ (Bill Gates).
193. “In three years, every product my company makes will be obsolete. The only question is whether we will make them obsolete or somebody else will.” ~ (Bill Gates).
194. “Once you embrace unpleasant news, not as a negative but as evidence of a need for change, you aren’t defeated by it. You’re learning from it.” ~ (Bill Gates).
195. “If we have optimism without empathy then it doesn’t matter how much we master the secrets of science. We’re not really solving problems, we’re just working on puzzles.” ~ (Bill Gates).
196. “A fundamental new rule for business is that the Internet changes everything.” ~ (Bill Gates).
197. “Windows 95 was a nice milestone.” ~ (Bill Gates).
198. “It’s really kind of cool to have solar panels on your roof.” ~ (Bill Gates).
199. “Great organizations demand a high level of commitment by the people involved.” ~ (Bill Gates).
200. “Learning from mistakes and constantly improving products is a key in all successful companies.” ~ (Bill Gates).
201. “Don’t let complexity stop you.” ~ (Bill Gates).
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Short Biography of Bill Gates
Bill Gates III, born in 1955 in Seattle, co-founded Microsoft with Paul Allen.
He led the company to become a key player in the microcomputer revolution.
Gates, once criticized for aggressive business tactics, later shifted focus to philanthropy, mainly through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, after stepping back from Microsoft in 2008.
| Full Name | William Henry Gates III |
| Born | 28 October 1955 (age 68 years), Seattle, Washington, United States |
| Net worth | 12,780 crores USD (2024) Forbes |
| Occupations | Businessman, investor, philanthropist, writer |
| Children | Phoebe Adele Gates, Jennifer Gates, Rory John Gates |
| Organizations founded | Microsoft Corporation, MORE |
| Parents | Bill Gates Sr. & Mary Maxwell |
| Spouse | Melinda French Gates (m. 1994–2021) |
| Education | Harvard College (1973–1975), Lakeside School (1967–1973), Currier House |
| Height | 1.77 m |
| Website | gatesnotes.com |
Despite his wealth fluctuating over the years, Gates has consistently been one of the world’s richest, using his fortune for global health, education, and climate change initiatives.
His early life was marked by a passion for computing, leading him to drop out of Harvard to pursue Microsoft, which started with a software for the Altair 8800.
Quick Facts about Bill Gates
- Bill Gates, full name William Henry Gates III, was born on October 28, 1955.
- He co-founded Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
- Gates held multiple roles at Microsoft, including CEO and chief software architect.
- He was a key figure in the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s.
- Gates stepped down as Microsoft CEO in 2000 but remained as chairman and chief software architect.
- He transitioned to a part-time role at Microsoft in 2008 to focus more on philanthropy.
- Gates has been on the Forbes list of the world’s billionaires since 1987.
- He was the world’s richest person from 1995 to 2017, except for a few years.
- As of February 2024, Gates’s net worth is estimated at $148 billion.
- Post-Microsoft, Gates focused on philanthropy and other business ventures, including Cascade Investment and TerraPower.
- He founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest private charity.
- Gates and Warren Buffett started The Giving Pledge in 2010 to encourage billionaires to donate half their wealth.
- Gates was born in Seattle, Washington, to a lawyer father and a mother who served on corporate boards.
- He showed early interest in software, writing his first program at 13.
- Gates attended Lakeside School, where he met Paul Allen.
- He enrolled at Harvard College but dropped out to start Microsoft.
- Gates and Allen’s first venture was Traf-O-Data, a traffic counter system.
- Microsoft’s big break came with their BASIC software for the Altair 8800 computer.
- Gates was known for his intense management style and was actively involved in the company’s early software development.
- Microsoft’s partnership with IBM on the PC DOS operating system was a major success.
- Gates led Microsoft to develop Windows, which became the dominant PC operating system.
- His management style involved closely reviewing and sometimes rewriting code in Microsoft’s early years.
- Gates transitioned out of a day-to-day role at Microsoft in 2006, focusing more on philanthropy.
- He stepped down as Microsoft’s chairman in 2014 but remained as a technology adviser.
- Gates has expressed concerns about superintelligence and the potential risks it poses.
- He warned about the lack of preparedness for a global pandemic before COVID-19.
- During the COVID-19 pandemic, Gates was active in efforts to develop treatments and vaccines.
- Gates has been involved in efforts to eradicate diseases like polio through vaccination campaigns.
- He has made significant investments in clean energy and climate change initiatives.
- Gates left his board positions at Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway in 2020 to focus on philanthropy.
Top Questions about Bill Gates
A: Bill Gates is famous for being a key figure in the tech world, mainly as the co-founder of Microsoft. This role significantly contributed to his wealth, making him one of the richest people in the U.S.
A: Bill Gates owns a diverse range of companies through his investment portfolio, including Canadian National Railway Company, Microsoft Corp, Waste Management Inc., Berkshire Hathaway, Coupang Inc., and others.
A: Currently, Bill Gates is co-chairing the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he guides strategies, advocates for key issues, and directs the organization’s overall course.
A: Bill Gates’ first job was as a computer programmer for TRW during his senior year in high school.
A: Bill Gates holds several titles including Co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Chairman and founder of multiple organizations like Cascade Investment, Branded Entertainment Network, TerraPower, and Gates Ventures, and Technology advisor of Microsoft.
A: Microsoft is primarily owned by institutional investors, with former CEO Steve Ballmer and founder Bill Gates holding significant shares. Vanguard and Blackrock are its largest institutional shareholders.
A: The exact amount of Bill Gates’ first salary is not publicly disclosed, but it’s noted that Steve Ballmer started at Microsoft with a base pay of $50,000 in the 1970s.
A: Bill Gates was just 20 years old when he co-founded Microsoft. He became a millionaire by the time he was 30 due to Microsoft’s success.
A: Satya Nadella is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft, having held various leadership roles within the company before becoming CEO in February 2014.
A: Bill Gates was a pre-law student at Harvard University in 1973, where he also took mathematics and graduate-level computer science courses before leaving to focus on Microsoft.
A: William Henry Gates III co-founded Microsoft and served in various roles including chairman, CEO, president, and chief software architect. He was also the largest individual shareholder until May 2014.
A: Gates stepped down as CEO of Microsoft in January 2000, and Steve Ballmer succeeded him.
A: Gates was listed as the richest person in the world by Forbes from 1995 to 2017, except for 2008 and 2010 to 2013. Jeff Bezos surpassed him in October 2017.
A: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is a private charitable foundation established by Gates and his then-wife Melinda in 2000. It has made significant contributions to various causes, including the early 21st century vaccination campaign that helped eradicate the wild poliovirus in Africa.
A: Gates and Warren Buffett founded The Giving Pledge, a commitment by billionaires to give at least half of their wealth to philanthropy.
