Bill Gates

William Henry Gates, the person who never graduated from a college, is the current chairman and former chief executive of Microsoft. His net worth is around $61 Billion. He founded Microsoft in year 1975 along with his friend Paul Allen.

He was rated as the world’s youngest self-made billionaire in year 1987. He was listed in the pages of Forbes’ 400 Richest People in America issue when he was 32 years old.

Introduction:

Name: William Henry “Bill” Gates III

Born: 28^th October 1955 in Seattle, USA
Age: 56 Years

Major Fields:

• Entrepreneur
• Computer Programmer
• Philanthropist
• Author

Books:

• The Road Ahead
• Business @ the Speed of Thought

Interesting facts about Bill Gates:

• He is ranked among the world’s richest people wherein he scored number one in the list from 1995 till 2009, except 2008 wherein he was ranked number three.

• In 1973 he became a student at Harvard University but dropped out in year 1975 wherein he decided to follow his dreams. He had interest in software and programming since early age.
  
  

  Image credit: Flickr Esparta

• At the age of thirteen he started writing his own programs and at the age of twenty years he formed Microsoft. He wrote his first program which was tic-tac-toe game that allowed users to play against the computer.

• He created his first venture – Traf-O-Data , at the age 17 with Paul Allen to make traffic counters built on the Intel 8008 processor.

• Bill Gates functioned as a congressional page in the U.S. House of Representatives in year 1973.

• His company became famous for their computer operating systems – MS DOS and later Microsoft Windows. He worked on aggressively broadening the company’s product line by holding the position of Product Strategist from Microsoft’s founding year 1975 till 2006.

• In year 2000, Bill Gates established Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation along with his wife and has been pursuing a number of philanthropic endeavors. His organization has been donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs around the world.

• Bill Gates also appeared in a series of ads to promote Microsoft in 2008.

Some cool quotes by Bill Gates:

• As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.
• If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss. He doesn’t have tenure.
• If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.
• Life is not fair; get used to it.
• The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.
• Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
• Whether it’s Google or Apple or free software, we’ve got some fantastic competitors and it keeps us on our toes.