Bill Gates Microsoft Co-founder Biography | Inspirational Quotes

Bill Gates (William Henry Gates III) is an American business magnate, co-founder of the Microsoft Corporation, author, investor and philanthropist. Paul Allen and Gates launched Microsoft in 1975, which became the world’s biggest PC software company. He held the positions in Microsoft as CEO, Chairman and Chief Software Architect. He became one of the richest men in the world. In 2014, Gates announced that he abdicated it as Microsoft’s chairman to focus on charitable work at his foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.

Early Life and Education Life of Bill Gates:

Gates was born on 28 October, 1955 in Seattle, Washington. William H. Gates Sr and Mary Maxwell Gates are the parents of Bill gates. He has one older sister, Kristi and one younger sister, Libby. His mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate Banc System and the united way and his father was a prominent lawyer and his maternal grandfather was JW Maxwell, he served a national bank president. At the age of 13, Gates joined in the Lakeside School. He was excellent in Science, Maths and doing very well in drama also. His parents wanted him to become a lawyer but Gates was interested in computers. When he was in Eighth grade, a Seattle computer company offered to provide computer time for the students. The Mother's Club used proceeds from the school's rummage sale to purchase a teletype terminal for students to use. Gates took interest on General Electric programing. He wrote a tic-tac-toe program in BASIC computer language. He learnt various programs that ran on the system including programs in Lisp, Fortran and Machine language. Gates wrote a program to schedule students in Classes.  At the age 17, Gates and Paul Allen started a small company called Traf-o-Data to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor. Bill Gates enrolled at Harvard University in 1973. He studied Mathematics and Computer Science courses and he was fascinated in his own coding. When he saw an opportunity to find his own company, Gates left out of Harvard without finishing his course.

Personal Life of Bill Gates:

Bill Gates married Melinda French on 1 January 1994. Jennifer Katharine, Phoebe Adele and Rory John are the children of Bill and Melinda.

Bill Gates Foundation of Microsoft:

In 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen formed Micro-Soft. It was culminating in approximately $2.5 million in 1979. Gates reviewed every line of code and he was also involved in many aspects of Microsoft’s business such as packing and sending off orders. In 1980 IBM (International Business Machines Corporation) approached Microsoft for a new BASIC operating system for its new computers. Microsoft worked hard to sell its operating systems to these other companies.

Microsoft Windows:

Microsoft released its first version of Windows in 1990. This was a development in operating software as it replaced text interfaces with graphical interfaces. Windows became the most popular operating system in the world with a graphical Interface. In 1995 Windows 95 was released. This version of windows is the basis of all future releases from windows 2000 to the latest XP and Vista.

Philanthropic Activities of Bill gates:

Bill Gates established the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Bill and Melinda Gates gave over $28 billion to charity and they were the second most generous philanthropists in America in 2007. The foundation is organized into four program areas: Global Health Division, Global development division, United States Division and Global policy & Advocacy Division. The foundation supports the use of genetically modified organisms in agricultural development. Gates donated $20 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the construction of a computer laboratory in 1999. Gates gave $1 billion to a clean energy project in 2015.

Awards and Achievements:

• Gates was listed as a Billionaire in Forbes Magazine’s 400 richest people in America issue in 1987.
• Since 1987, Gates has been included in Forbes “The World’s Billionaires” list and was the wealthiest person from 1995 to 1996, 1998 to 2007, 2009 and has been since 2014.
• Bill and Melinda Gates received the Jefferson Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged in 2002.
• Gates received the James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award from The Tech Awards in 2006.
• Gates, along with his wife Melinda, received the Padma Bhushan, India's third-highest civilian award for their social work in the country in 2015.
• President Barack Obama honored Gates and his wife Melinda with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their philanthropic efforts in 2016.
• President François Hollande awarded Bill and Melinda with the France's highest national award – Legion of Honour in Paris for their charity efforts in 2017.
• Gates received Bower Award for Business Leadership from The Franklin Institute for his achievements at Microsoft and his philanthropic work in 2010.
• Gates has received honorary doctorates from Nyenrode Business Universiteit, Breukelen, The Netherlands, in 2000; the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, in 2002; Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, in 2005; Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in April 2007; Harvard University in June 2007; the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, in 2007, and Cambridge University in June 2009. He was also made an honorary trustee of Peking University in 2007.

Bill Gates Authored Books:

Book-1: The Road Ahead, written with Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold and journalist Peter Rinearson, was published in November 1995.

Book-2: Business @ the Speed of Thought, which discusses how business and technology are integrated, and shows how digital infrastructures and information networks can help getting an edge on the competition. It was published in 1999.

Bill Gates Motivational Quotes:

• “If you were born poor it’s not your mistake, but if you die poor it’s your mistake.”
• “Don’t compare yourself with anyone in this world, if you do so, you are insulting yourself.”
• “I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one.”
• “Patience is a key element of success.”
• “I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think that a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.”
• “I failed in some subjects in exam, but my friend passed in all. Now he is an engineer in Microsoft and I am the owner of Microsoft.”
• “People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn’t they?”
• “It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”
• “To win big, you sometimes need to take big risks.”
• “Find yourself.”
• “Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player.”
• “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.”
• “What’s amazing is, if young people understood how doing well in school makes the rest of their life so much interesting, they would be more motivated. It’s so far away in time that they can’t appreciate what it means for their whole life.”
• “On my desk I have three screens, synchronized to form a single desktop. I can drag items from one screen to the next. Once you have that large display area, you’ll never go back, because it has a direct impact on productivity.”
• “Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering.”
• “The way to be successful in the software world is to come up with breakthrough software, and so whether it’s Microsoft Office or Windows, it’s pushing that forward. New ideas, surprising the marketplace, so good engineering and good business are one in the same.”
• “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.”
• “Exposure from a young age to the realities of the world is a super-big thing.”
• “I was lucky to be involved and get to contribute to something that was important, which is empowering people with software.”
• “I don’t think there’s anything unique about human intelligence.”
• “Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity – the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires.”
• “At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top – I’m afraid that’s not quite right.”
• “I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts.”
• “I spend a lot of time reading.”
• “I’m a geek.”
• “The general idea of the rich helping the poor, I think, is important.”
• “Our success has really been based on partnerships from the beginning.”
• “I was a kind of hyper-intense person in my twenties and very impatient.”
• “Don’t make the same decision twice. Spend time and thought to make a solid decision the first time so that you don’t revisit the issue unnecessarily.”
• “We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.”
• “We start life with many big dreams–things we want to accomplish, create, build and experience. But if you ask anyone past the age of 40 what happened to all the dreams they had, they will most likely answer; Life.”
• “Reward worthy failure–experimentation.”
• “As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.”
• “Life has a tendency to just happen. But it happens because we make choices. The life you create and design for yourself is going to accumulate from the choices you make over time. Sure, there are unexpected things that can derail dreams. But we can control where we put our focus, and if we choose to put one dream ahead of another.”