When people tell you Bill Gates’s inspirational story and how talented and hardworking Bill Gates is, you can’t doubt his talent or hard work. But a part of his story is never told to the people.
Had you been in Bill Gates’ place, and even if you were equally talented and hardworking as Bill Gates, you still would not have achieved what he has? Why am I saying this? Come, let’s find out.
EARLY LIFE of BILL GATES:
Seattle, Washington: 1967. an eighth-grader, Bill, gets a hold of a computer.
This wasn’t a computer like the ones we’re familiar with. It was the Teletype Model 33 ASR of the time, connected through phone lines to the computers of the General Electric Company.
But this surprised young Bill. The possibilities of the computer. Bills started spending hours trying to figure out the computer. He developed his first program on the computer. Fast-forwarding to some years later, Bill Gates became the richest man in the world. He remained the richest person for about 20 years.
Today, he’s the fourth richest with a wealth of $124 billion. Let’s start at the beginning.
At 12-years-old, Bill Gates was studying at Lakeside School. A private school in Seattle. At school, he had some friends who were equally passionate about computers. Kent Evans, Bill Gates’ first best friend. Paul Allen, a tenth-grader. and Rick Weiland.
The four of them started the Lakeside Programmers Group. He tried to come up with ways to use the computer outside school too. In Seattle, there was a small company called Computer Center Corporation. They rented out computers by the hour.
A year later, in 1968, Bill and his friends started visiting this store to use the computers. But the cost to do this was quite high. This store charged $40 to use a computer for an hour. So Bill and his friends started looking for bugs in the operating system of CCC.
They found the loopholes in the computer system and tried to exploit those for more computer time. When they were caught, the store banned them.
First Job of Bill Gates:
But next summer, this small company thought of using these kids to look for bugs in the system. They said that they could use the computers for free if they kept on identifying the problems in the system. Here, Bill Gates learned several programming languages. Fortran, Lisp But soon this small store went out of business.
Working for Information Sciences Inc:
Again, these kids were left with no means to access computers. Then they found a company in Portland. Called Information Sciences Inc. This company allowed them to use their computers for free too, as long as they wrote a program for the company.
It was a payroll programmer, it helped them learn more about taxes and payrolls. By then, their school had recognized their talents, and so in 1971, Bill Gates and his best friend, Kent Evans were told to write a program for the school.
They had to make class schedules for the program. They worked hard on the program, but on a weekend, Kent Evans went on a holiday to the hills, and unfortunately, he died after falling off of a cliff. This accident shocked Bill. But he didn’t stop working. He continued working with his other friend, Paul Allen. He was in college by then.
Job In the Corporate Sector:
In 1972, Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded their first company, Traf-o-Data. They were interested in technology and business. They wanted to develop a program that could process the traffic on the roads. so that they could sell it to the traffic department.
Though they worked hard on it, it didn’t turn out very successful. The next year, in 1973, Bill Gates graduated from high school. He takes the SAT and scores exceedingly well. 1590 out of 1600. with this, he gets admitted to Harvard.
One of the best universities in America. By then, Paul was quite bored of attending classes at the university. So he moved to Boston and started working with Honeywell Corporation.
He advised Bill to start working with him at Honeywell. so in 1974, both were working for Honeywell Corporation. One day, while Paul was going somewhere, he came across a magazine stall. which carried the magazine Popular Electronics. The picture on the front page of the magazine was of Altair 8800.
The first personal computer in the world. It had an Intel 8080 processor. Paul bought the magazine and ran to show it to Bill Gates. Paul has been trying to tell Bill Gates for quite some time that the size of the computer chips was getting exponentially smaller. while their speed and power were exponentially increasing.
And it was only a matter of time before a computer was built that was so small that it could be used as a personal computer. There was a live example on the front page of the magazine. someone had built the computer before Bill Gates and Paul.
Foundation OF Microsoft:
The company that made this computer was Mits. Paul and Bill called up the company and told them that the two of them would like to write software for them. The most popular programming language at the time was Basic. so they wanted to write software for the computer in Basic. Paul had to relocate to another city, while Bill dropped out of Harvard.
They built a Basic version and sold it to Altair. The company was so pleased with the work that they offered a job to Paul, but by then, Paul was running his consultancy. Micro-Soft. It was later renamed to one word; Microsoft. They had several contracts from Texas Instruments, a Japanese company.
But Microsoft got its first big break when it provided the DOS operating system for IBM Computers. In the meanwhile, the team of Microsoft was working on a new operating system. In November 1983, they announced their new operating system. Windows 1.0 Next year, in March 1986, Microsoft launched its IPO. with Goldman Sachs as their Book Running Manager.
The IPO price was set at $21/share. After the first day of trading, their share price had reached $28. and they never had to look back since. Microsoft went on to be extremely successful. Windows 98 was launched.
As we all know, their software reached all nooks and crannies in the world, their computers were astoundingly successful. You might find this story very inspirational. A super-intelligent boy, who’s passionate about something, and works hard on it.
Now Think about Reality:
Let us think out of the box, and even drop out of college to pursue his dream, and build a company that becomes immensely successful. This boy becomes the richest man in the world.
Isn’t it a motivational story? An inspirational story. If Bill Gates could do it, why can’t you? But friends, as I told you at the beginning of the article, there’s a twist in our story.
What is it?
It is the twist of Privilege. How privileged was Bill Gates? Let me explain what I mean by points. as you’ll understand, you find that had you been in Bill Gates’ place, and were as talented and hardworking as Bill Gates, even then you couldn’t have been as successful as him. Why? Come, let’s see.
First Secret of Bill Gates:
If Bill Gates had been a woman, it wouldn’t have been possible. Because during the 1960s, there was significant gender discrimination in the USA. Did you know that in the 1960s, a bank could refuse to give a credit card to a woman? Even if the woman was married, her husband’s signature was needed.
In many states of the US, women couldn’t serve on the jury. In 1961, the Supreme Court of the US, upheld a Floridian law, preventing women from serving on the jury. Women weren’t allowed to take birth control pills, it was allowed only after the historic judgment in the US in 1972.
1963’s Kennedy’s Commission on the Status of Women stated that for every dollar that a man earns if a woman does the same job and the same work, she earns 59 cents. It was in 1964, the US passed a law preventing gender discrimination against women. Perhaps a more important point, during the 1960s, almost all Ivy League universities didn’t grant admission to women.
Women weren’t even allowed to enter Harvard’s library till 1967. Till 1977, the male-to-female ratio was at 4:1. Women had to be four times as smart as men to get admission to the same university. Harvard had a sister school for women, Radcliffe College.
It didn’t give the female students the same privileges that the male students got. It was shut down only in 1999, and a common Harvard School was set up, where male and female students could get admission without any discrimination.
The Second Secret of Bill Gates:
The second secret had Bill Gates been black, it wouldn’t have been possible. Because the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, before this, the “blacks” weren’t allowed to enter restaurants, cinema halls, churches, or schools.
Even in buses, they had to sit in designated corners, while the buses used to be reserved for the whites. People of color weren’t even allowed to vote in several southern states.
In 1968, when Bill Gates and Paul Allen were working on their computers in the Computer Centre Corporation, Martin Luther King was assassinated, because he was fighting for the rights of people of color. Throughout the 1960s, there were several riots for Black Rights. Over racial discrimination.
The Third Secret OF Bill Gates:
Bill Gates was born in some other country. Or even in another US city. It might not have been possible. Bill and Paul lived in a developed country a developed city. had Bill Gates been born in India, he might not have seen a computer before he turned 30.
Because mass-scale adoption of computers was seen in India after 1985.But even if we talk about America, Seattle was an advanced city for computers. Computer technology reached this city in the 1960s.
The programming language Basic was invented in this city. The computer that Bill and Paul were using at the CCC store, was one of the first commercial systems, to be available in the country.
The Fourth Secret of Bill Gates:
The fourth is even if you were a white male living in Seattle, don’t get your hopes up, because not everyone living in Seattle had access to computers. Bill and Paul both were studying at a top-notch private school.
The middle-class people couldn’t send their kids to the Lakeside School. Not only were they getting a good quality education at the school, but they were also getting access to computers. When Bill Gates experienced computers for the first time in 1965, there were only about 22,000 computers all across America. While the population of America was 200 million.
The Fifth Secret Bill Gates:
The Fifth is the influence of parents. Paul Allen’s father Ken, was the Associate Director at the Library of the University of Washington. Because of this, Paul could access the books on computers. Bill Gates’ parents were also on the governing body of the university.
When the CCC store went bankrupt, Paul and Bill went to their parents for help and they got access to the university’s graduate computing center at Robert’s Hall.
There they worked with various computers. It was here that they saw the first computer game of their lives. So Paul and Bill got their parents’ help, an advantage. Later in his life, Paul built a library and a computer center and named the library after his father for this reason. Bill Gates too got an advantage of his father’s profession. Bill Gates’s father was a lawyer. Officially registering Microsoft, renting a space, hiring people, fighting legal battles against Altair, would have been very difficult for a common man, but because his father was a lawyer, Bill Gates could get a lot of legal help from his father.
On a related note, not everyone can afford to drop out of college. Bill and Paul could afford this because they had their family’s wealth as a reserve. There’s another man in our story, Monte Davidoff.
When Paul and Bill were working on Altair’s Basic software, a crucial part of the software was written by Monte. But when Paul and Bill offered Monte a permanent job at Microsoft, Monte refused to drop out of college.
He said that his father had a small hardware store, so he couldn’t afford to take such a big risk. He had to get a college degree. and thus it is a very important point. Not everyone can afford to drop out of college.
The Story of First DOS Program of Microsoft and Benefit of Privilege:
A major turning for Microsoft was when they got a contract from IBM. Till then, Microsoft was a small company. But how did they get this contract? There’s an interesting story to it.
The Chairperson of IBM at the time was John Opel. He was also a board member of a non-profit organization United Way. A co-member of the board of this organization was Mary Maxwell Gates. Bill Gates’ mother. She talked to Opel about Microsoft.as Microsoft’s competition, there was a big company called Digital Research.
It was much bigger than Microsoft. IBM wasn’t able to negotiate properly with it. So when Mary suggested Microsoft, IBM’s Chairman decided to give a chance to Microsoft. This chance that Microsoft got, was immensely important. They may not have gotten this chance if Mary Gates was on the same board. Not only this, friends, there’s another twist in the story, regarding IBM’s contract.
When Microsoft entered into a contract with IBM, Microsoft didn’t even have any software to sell. There was another company called Seattle Computer Products, that had a Q-DOS Operating System.
Paul bought this Q-DOS operating System, and gave it to IBM. It wasn’t the exact copy, they made some modifications to it. They changed the name too. From Q-DOS, it became MS-DOS. Microsoft DOS. and you know how popular MS-DOS is today.
But anyway, what I’m trying to say here is that these points, were the privileges that Bill Gates and Paul Allen had, due to which they could be so successful. with talent and hard work alone, perhaps Bill Gates couldn’t have reached the point he is at now.