Bill Gates net worth in 2023 Career & Relationship
| Estimated value: | €106.8 billion |
|---|---|
| Age: | 66 |
| Born: | 10/28/1955 |
| Country of origin: | United States |
| Source of Wealth: | entrepreneur |
| Last updated: | 2021 |
introduction
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is considered one of the leading minds driving the digital revolution. Today he still holds 500 million shares in the tech giant, which made him the richest man in the world by 2017. He retired from day-to-day business in 2008 and is now dedicating himself more to charitable activities.
early life
William Henry Gates, the Third was born in Seattle and found himself there as a middle child in a fairly wealthy family. Both father William (lawyer) and mother Mary (teacher) were academics and pursued a very progressive method of education for that era. They gave their offspring autonomous rights early on and encouraged creative thinking. At the age of 13, Bill first took this to the renowned private school “Lakeside”, which followed similar pedagogical principles. Here, with long-time companions, he spent much of the day in the computer room and started his entrepreneurship by designing a system for recording traffic data and selling it for $20,000. After graduating from high school, he moved to Harvard in 1973. Here the first foundations were created for the operating system, which was later used under the name “Microsoft BASIC”.
Career
To a certain extent, college got in the way of the project: Gates dropped out in 1975 in order to be able to devote himself full-time to his garage company, which at the time had 16 employees. Initial sales were achieved with the BASIC 2.0 programming language for the Altair 8800. However, the deal with the client MITS was capped at $180,000. Development up to 1980 was sluggish. The breakthrough finally came as a result of the exclusive cooperation with IBM, whose devices were operated exclusively with MS-DOS from then on. Gates joined Microsoft’s supervisory board in 1983, but remained its chief developer at the same time and shaped the company into a global brand. It went public in 1986 with a market capitalization of $60 million. Gates took over as CEO at the age of just 30. Just under a year later, the share price had risen massively, making Bill the youngest billionaire of all time. After numerous mergers and innovative products, its (and thus Microsoft’s) star began to decline towards the end of the millennium. From 2000 onwards, he increasingly withdrew from day-to-day business, switched back to the supervisory board and finally ended his active career in the summer of 2008.
Career highlights
In retrospect, the deal with IBM that was already mentioned represents Bill’s greatest success: Up to this point in time, numerous start-ups were operating in the software sector in the USA. However, they were all only suppliers to the hardware manufacturers and, like Microsoft, achieved very meager sales. That changed abruptly when Gates IBM did not sell the patent rights to MS-DOS, but only licenses for it. In addition, IBM had now been tied to Microsoft products for years. The PC achieved unprecedented sales figures and Microsoft received commissions for every device sold. By 1995, Gates had increased his company’s global market share to over 90 percent. His entrepreneurial skills were shown here by recognizing and purchasing future-oriented products at an early stage. This applies, among other things, to the office software “Office” and the further development of the graphical user interface, which was designed in 1983 by the competitor Apple. In response to the civilian use of the Internet, the launch of Windows 95 was brought forward, which meant the next boost for Microsoft and Gates. Put in numbers, Bill took the lead in Forbes magazine’s listing in 1994 and has gone on to win it 14 more times. The development of Microsoft’s stock market values is even more impressive: At the market launch of Windows 95, the stock was quoted at around 2.5 dollars. By the time the New Economy crashed in 2000, it had risen to $50 and is now trading at $150. This makes the tech giant one of the few companies worth over $1 trillion.
Famous quotes
“I don’t have any money. I hold Microsoft stock.”
“The most dissatisfied customers are our biggest external source of quality control.”
“Headlines usually pick up on negative developments. The news therefore does not reflect the whole of reality because improvements are spread over long periods of time and are not headline-worthy.”
“Innovation is developing at an increasingly frightening pace.”
“US immigration legislation is extremely bad. It ranks among the greatest injustices committed on behalf of the US government.”
tips for success
“If I had formulated a clear career goal, I would have exceeded it years ago. However, as a successful entrepreneur you have to be able to react flexibly to market needs.”
“Even if your product isn’t the best, it must always be presented as if it is.”
“People overestimate the changes that will happen in the next 2 years and underestimate what will happen in the next decade. Don’t let that distract you from your goals.”
“Success is more fun than failure. But in the end, it’s failures that teach you the most and enable exponential growth.”
| Estimated value: | €106.8 billion |
|---|