BILL GATES

BIOGRAPHY
• Occupation: Entrepreneur,
Chairman of Microsoft
• Born: October 28, 1955 in
Seattle, Washington
• Best known for: Founder of
Microsoft, one of the richest
men in the world
Where did Bill Gates grow up?
William Henry Gates III was born in
Seattle, Washington on October 28,
1955. He was the middle child of William
H. Gates II, a prominent Seattle lawyer,
and Mary Gates, who worked as a
teacher before she had kids. Bill had an
older sister, Kristi, and a younger sister,
Libby.
• Bill loved to play board games
and was competitive at most
everything he did. He was an
intelligent student and his best
subject in grade school was
math. However, Bill got easily
bored with school and ended up
getting into trouble a lot.
• His parents kept him occupied
with outside activities like Boy
Scouts (he earned his Eagle
Scout badge) and reading
science fiction books.
• When Bill turned thirteen his
parents sent him to the Lakeside
Preparatory School hoping it
would prove more of a challenge
for him. It was at Lakeside
where Bill met his future
business partner Paul Allen. He
also was introduced to
computers at Lakeside.
Computers
• At the time when Bill was growing
up, there weren't home
computers like the PC, the laptop,
or the tablet like we have today.
Computers were owned by large
companies and took up lots of
space.
Lakeside school purchased time
on one of these computers that
the students could use. Bill
found the computer fascinating.
The first computer program he
wrote was a version of tic-tac-
toe.
At one point, Bill and some of his
fellow students were banned from
using the computer because they
hacked it to get extra computing
time. They then agreed to look for
bugs in the computer system in
return for computer time. Later,
while still in high school, Bill wrote
a payroll program for a company
and a scheduling program for his
• He even started a business with
his friend Paul Allen writing a
computer program that helped
to track traffic patterns in
Seattle.
College
• After graduating from high school
in 1973, Gates attended Harvard
University. At first he planned to
study as a lawyer, but he
continued to spend much of his
time on computers. He also kept
in touch with his friend Paul Allen
who was working for Honeywell.
• When the Altair personal
computer came out in 1974,
Gates and Allen decided they
could write a BASIC software
program to run on the computer.
They called up Altair and told
them they were working on the
program. Altair wanted a
demonstration in a few weeks,
• He worked hard over the next
month or so and, when they
finally went to New Mexico to run
the software, it worked perfectly
the first time
Starting microsoft
• In 1975, Gates dropped out of
Harvard to start a software
company with Paul Allen called
Microsoft. The company was doing
well, but it was in 1980 that Gates
made a deal with IBM that would
change computing.
• Microsoft reached a deal to
provide the MS-DOS operating
system on the new IBM PC.
Gates sold the software to IBM
for a fee of $50,000, however
he held onto the copyright of
the software.
• When the PC market took off,
Microsoft also sold MS-DOS to
other PC manufacturers. Soon,
Microsoft was the operating
system in a large percentage of
computers around the world.
Windows
In 1985, Gates and Microsoft took
another risk. They released the
Microsoft Windows operating
system. This was Microsoft's answer
to a similar operating system
introduced by Apple in 1984. At first,
many people complained that
Microsoft Windows wasn't as good as
the Apple version.
However, Gates continued to press
the open PC concept. Microsoft
Windows could run on a variety of
PC compatible machines, while the
Apple operating system only ran on
Apple machines. Microsoft won the
operating system battle and was
soon installed on nearly 90% of the
world's personal computers.
Microsoft Grows
• Gates wasn't satisfied with just
winning the operating system
portion of the software market.
Over the next few years he
introduced new products such
as Windows Office programs
like Word and Excel. The
company also introduced new
and improved versions of
World's Richest Man
• In 1986, Gates took Microsoft
public. The company's stock
was worth $520 million. Gates
owned 45 percent of the stock
himself which was worth $234
million. The company
continued its rapid growth and
the stock price soared. At one
point, Gates' stock was worth
Why was Bill Gates
successful?
• Like most successful
entrepreneurs, Bill Gates' success
came from a combination of hard
work, intelligence, timing,
business sense, and luck. Gates
constantly challenged his
employees to work harder and
innovate, but he also worked as
hard or harder than the people
• He took a risk when he dropped
out of Harvard to start his own
company. He also took a risk
when he changed Microsoft's
operating system from MS-DOS to
Windows. However, his risks were
calculated. He had confidence in
himself and his product.
Personal Life
• Gates married Melinda French in January
of 1994. They have since had three
children including two daughters and a
son. In 2000, Gates and his wife formed
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Today, this is one of the largest
charitable foundations in the world.
Gates personally has donated over $28
billion to charity.
Interesting Facts about Bill
Gates
• Interesting Facts about Bill
Gates Bill's nickname as a child
was "Trey" which was given to
him by his grandmother.
• He scored a 1590 out of 1600
on the SAT.
• At first Microsoft had a hyphen
in the name "Micro-soft". It was
a combination of
microcomputer and software.
• When Microsoft first started
out, Gates would look at every
line of code before a new
software product shipped
• In 2004, Gates predicted that
email spam would be gone by
2006. He was wrong on that one!
• He was dubbed an honorary
knight by Queen Elizabeth. He
does not use the title "Sir"
because he is not a citizen of the
United Kingdom.
THAK YOU !!