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    Bill Gates: In His Own Words
    Bill Gates: In His Own Words
    Bill Gates: In His Own Words
    Ebook156 pages53 minutes

    Bill Gates: In His Own Words

    By Lisa Rogak

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    About this ebook

    Get inside the head of one of the most important leaders of our time with this collection of quotes from—global business icon and philanthropist Bill Gates, the co-founder and former CEO of Microsoft.

    After founding Microsoft in 1975, Bill Gates took the software industry by storm. Today, Microsoft has become one of the largest technology companies in the world—boasting a market capitalization of more than $1.6 trillion. From the Windows operating system to Microsoft Office Suite, Gates and his team forever changed the way people use computers—and ultimately planted the seeds of a global technology revolution in the process.

    Gates has long been ranked as one of the world’s wealthiest men—which gave him a name recognition far greater than that of most CEOs—and businesspeople of all stripes have looked to him as a role model, using his words and business strategies to help create, inspire, and grow their own companies. After he stopped running Microsoft's day-to-day operations in 2008 to devote himself full-time to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a kinder, gentler Gates began to emerge. In stark contrast to the implacable reputation Gates earned as a CEO, as a philanthropist, Gates has helped to change the lives of millions of people worldwide. In technology, in business, and now, in philanthropy, Gates has proven himself to be one of the most influential people of our time.

    Bill Gates’s second act is no less compelling than his first. This collection of quotes provides an inside look into the inner workings of one of the most revered, and occasionally controversial, business icons of the past four decades. And whether you’re interested in his personal life or looking for inspiration to drive you forward in your own business endeavors, Bill Gates: In His Own Words has much to offer. As the tech giants who distinguished the turn of the 21st century shape public life in ways that outstrip the previous century's titans of industry, we look to figures like Gates for inspiration. Now updated, expanded, and redesigned since its original publication in 2012 as Impatient Optimist: Bill Gates In His Own Words, you can find Gates’s most inspirational, thought-provoking quotes in one place.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAgate B2
    Release dateJan 12, 2021
    ISBN9781572848474
    Bill Gates: In His Own Words
    Author

    Lisa Rogak

    LISA ROGAK is the author of numerous books, including And Nothing But the Truthiness: The Rise (and Further Rise) of Stephen Colbert. She is the editor of the New York Times bestseller Barack Obama in His Own Words and author of the New York Times bestseller Angry Optimist: The Life and Times of Jon Stewart. Rogak lives in New Hampshire.

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      Book preview

      Bill Gates - Lisa Rogak

      Introduction

      Love him or hate him, Bill Gates has been a venerable worldwide business icon for more than three decades, ever since the first mass-produced personal computer debuted in 1981.

      Alternately described as an ingenious visionary and a tyrannical, sometimes less-than-scrupulous businessman, he has been all but impossible to ignore. But despite one’s opinion of Gates, even his most prominent naysayers have no choice but to admit the obvious: he helped to spearhead one of the greatest revolutions in modern history by turning the inaccessible computer technology of the 1970s into an invaluable and easy-to-use tool for the masses, while also providing jobs and wealth to many along the way.

      Gates has consistently been ranked as one of the world’s wealthiest men—as well as one of the most controversial founders and CEOs in history—and businesspeople of all stripes have taken their cues from him, using his words and business strategies to help create and grow their own companies. In 2008, after Gates stopped running the day-to-day operations of Microsoft to devote himself full-time to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a kinder, gentler side began to emerge—a contrast to his hard-nosed reputation. As a result, people who are actively involved in their own philanthropic efforts, whether in a professional or part-time capacity, have begun to take a second look at the man behind the foundation.

      Despite the fact that he’s no longer at the helm of one of the world’s most powerful companies, Gates has steadfastly remained in the news. His friendship and philanthropic partnerships with U2’s Bono and investing titan Warren Buffett attract the attention of both the media and public, which only helps to gain more attention for his charitable acts—whether he is testifying with former President Bill Clinton about increasing federal aid to earthquake-ravaged cities and villages in Haiti or making the rounds at the Sundance Film Festival to promote the topic of public education reform. And unlike Gates’s days at Microsoft, where he was entrusted with protecting a bevy of corporate secrets, today his life is virtually an open book, featuring regular updates on Facebook and Twitter and blog posts at TheGatesNotes.com.

      Bill Gates’s second act is no less compelling than his first. Anyone interested in his personal life or looking for inspiration to drive their own business endeavors forward can find enlightenment through reading Gates’s own words.

      PART ONE: RUNNING A COMPANY

      Early Days

      THE EARLY DREAM was a machine that was easy to use, very reliable and very powerful. We even talked back in 1975 about how we could make a machine that all of your reading and note taking would be done on that machine.

      —What the Best CEOs Know, 2005

      WE DIDN’T EVEN obey a twenty-four-hour clock. We’d come in and program for a couple of days straight … four or five of us, when it was time to eat we’d all get in our cars, kind of race over to the restaurant and sit and talk about what we were doing. Sometimes I’d get excited talking about things, I’d forget to eat, but then you know, we’d just go back and program some more. It was us and our friends—those were fun days.

      —Triumph of the Nerds, PBS, June 1996

      LIFE FOR US was working and maybe going to a movie and then working some more. Sometimes customers would come in, and we were so tired we’d fall asleep in front of them. Or at an internal meeting I’d lie down on the floor, because I like to do that to brainstorm. And then I’d just fall asleep.

      —CNNMoney/Fortune, October 2, 1995

      WE HAD CONTESTS to see who could stay in the building like three or four days straight. Some of the more prudish people would say, Go home and take a bath.

      —Masters of Enterprise, 1999

      There were a lot of missteps in the early days; because we got in early, we got to make more mistakes than other people.

      —Smithsonian Institution Oral and Video

      Histories, 2003

      WE THOUGHT THE world would be like it is now in terms of the popularity and impact of the PC, but we didn’t have the hubris to think that our company would be this size or have this kind of success. The paradox is that we thought, OK, we can just have this thirty-person company that will be turning out the software for every PC.

      —Newsweek, September 17, 2000

      IF YOU HAD asked me at any point how big Microsoft could be, Paul [Allen] and I once thought we could write all the software in the world with one hundred people. If you had told us that someday we would have more than five thousand people writing software, we would have just shaken our heads.

      —CNNMoney/Fortune, October 2, 1995

      I WAS A huge beneficiary of this country’s unique willingness to take a risk on a young person.

      —CNBC Town Hall Event, Columbia University,

      November 12, 2009

      PART ONE: RUNNING A COMPANY

      Leadership

      OUR BUSINESS STRATEGY from the beginning was quite different than all the computer companies that existed when we were started. We decided to focus just on doing the highvolume software, not to build hardware systems, not to do chips, just to do software … It was a strategy that required partners. I think the most successful partnership in the history of American business is the work we’ve done with Intel. When we started working with them, both companies were worth one-hundredth of what they’re worth today. And so, working hand-in-hand in a nice, complementary way, you know, with a little bit of friction from time to time because we’re both pretty strong-willed companies, we built two of the most successful enterprises of the era.

      —Keynote speech, San Jose State University, January

      27, 1998

      I ALWAYS KNEW I would have close business associates … that we would stick together and grow together no matter what happened. I didn’t know that because of some analysis. I just decided early on that was part of who I was.

      —TIME, January 13,

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