BILL GATES: HULK OF THE MODERN ERA

Image Credit: Getty Images/Gates

You might be wondering why i titled this post 'Bill Gates: Hulk of the modern era' Its simply because Mr gates has been on the list of the top 2 richest men for many years running and many more years to come, so as long as we aren't able to find a better technology that can replace, personal computers and other gadgets which he has his brand name on. 
Mr Gates has used up all his life to gather all the resources he is so blessed with today. Just like the incredible hulk, he is ever in his green form, with his philanthropic works, he is saving millions of people lives and making the world a better place. 

Mr Gates is an American business magnate, investor, author, philanthropist, humanitarian, and principal founder of the Microsoft Corporation. Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Gates pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors. He donated large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

EARLY LIFE

Gates was born in Seattle, Washington on October 28, 1955. He is the son of William H. Gates Sr. (b. 1925) and Mary Maxwell Gates (1929–1994). His ancestry includes English, German, Irish, and Scots-Irish. His father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way. Gates's maternal grandfather was JW Maxwell, a national bank president. Gates has one elder sister, Kristi (Kristianne), and one younger sister, Libby. He is the fourth of his name in his family, but is known as William Gates III or "Trey" because his father had the "II" suffix. Early on in his life, Gates's parents had a law career in mind for him

At 13, he enrolled in the Lakeside School, a private preparatory school. When he was in the eighth grade, the Mothers' Club at the school used proceeds from Lakeside School's rummage sale to buy a Teletype Model 33 ASR terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric (GE) computer for the school's students. Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC, and was excused from math classes to pursue his interest. He wrote his first computer program on this machine: an implementation of tic-tac-toe that allowed users to play games against the computer.

Gates was a National Merit Scholar when he graduated from Lakeside School in 1973. Gates did not have a definite study plan while he was a student at Harvard, and he spent a lot of time using the school's computers. Gates remained in contact with Paul Allen, and he joined him at Honeywell during the summer of 1974. He dropped out to pursue his passion in computers and teamed up with Paul Allen, a former schoolmate, to form Microsoft.

MICROSOFT

In 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen formed Micro-Soft, a blend of "micro-computer" and "software" (they dropped the hyphen to Microsoft within a year). Although the company started out on shaky footing, by 1979 Microsoft was grossing approximately $2.5 million, and, at the age of 23, Gates placed himself as the head of the company. With his acumen for software development and a keen business sense, he led the company and worked as its spokesperson. Gates personally reviewed every line of code the company shipped, often rewriting code himself when he saw it necessary. 

Following the development of software for IBM, between 1979 and 1981 Microsoft's growth exploded. Staff increased from 25 to 128, and revenue shot up from $2.5 million to $16 million. In mid-1981, Gates and Allen incorporated Microsoft, and Gates was appointed president and chairman of the board. Allen was named executive vice president.

At first, all was not smooth sailing. Although Microsoft’s BASIC software program for the Altair computer netted the company a fee and royalties, it wasn't meeting their overhead. According to Gates' later account, only about 10 percent of the people using BASIC in the Altair computer had actually paid for it. Microsoft's BASIC software was popular with computer hobbyists, who obtained pre-market copies and were reproducing and distributing them for free. At this time, much of the personal computer enthusiasts were people not in it for the money. They felt the ease of reproduction and distribution allowed them to share software with friends and fellow computer enthusiasts. Bill Gates thought differently. He saw the free distribution of software as stealing, especially when it involved software that was created to be sold.

In February 1976, Gates wrote an open letter to computer hobbyists, saying that continued distribution and use of software without paying for it would "prevent good software from being written." In essence, pirating software would discourage developers from investing time and money into creating quality software. The letter was unpopular with computer enthusiasts, but Gates stuck to his beliefs and would use the threat of innovation as a defense when faced with charges of unfair business practices.

Gates had an acrimonious relationship with MITS president Ed Roberts, often resulting in shouting matches. The combative Gates clashed with Roberts on software development and the direction of the business. Roberts considered Gates spoiled and obnoxious. In 1977, Roberts sold MITS to another computer company and went back to Georgia to enter medical school and become a doctor. 

Gates and Allen were on their own. The pair had to sue the new owner of MITS to retain the software rights they had developed for Altair. Microsoft wrote software in different formats for other computer companies, and, at the beginning of 1979, Gates moved the company's operations to Bellevue, Washington, just east of Seattle. Gates was glad to be home again in the Pacific Northwest, and threw himself into his work. All 25 employees of the young company had broad responsibilities for all aspects of the operation, product development, business development and marketing. 

WINDOWS

Microsoft launched its first retail version of Microsoft Windows on November 20, 1985. In August of the following year, the company struck a deal with IBM to develop a separate operating system called OS/2. Although the two companies successfully developed the first version of the new system, the partnership deteriorated due to mounting creative differences. During Microsoft's early history, Gates was an active software developer, particularly in the company's programming languageproducts, but his basic role in most of the company's history was primarily as a manager and executive. Gates has not officially been on a development team since working on the TRS-80 Model 100, but as late as 1989 he wrote code that shipped with the company's products. He remained interested in technical details; in 1985, Jerry Pournelle wrote that when he watched Gates announce Microsoft Excel, "Something else impressed me. Bill Gates likes the program, not because it's going to make him a lot of money (although I'm sure it will do that), but because it's a neat hack

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PHILANTHROPY

Gates studied the work of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, and donated some of his Microsoft stock in 1994 to create the "William H. Gates Foundation." In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three family foundations and Gates donated stock valued at $5 billion to create the charitable Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which was identified by the Funds for NGOs company in 2013, as the world's wealthiest charitable foundation, with assets reportedly valued at more than $34.6 billion. The Foundation allows benefactors to access information that shows how its money is being spent, unlike other major charitable organizations such as the Wellcome Trust.

In 2010, Gates along with fellow billionaire investors Warren Buffett, and Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg signed the "Gates-Buffet Giving Pledge", committing to donate at least half of their wealth over the course of time to charity

Bill and Melinda Gates have said that they intend to leave their three children $10 million each as their inheritance. With only $30 million kept in the family, they appear to be on a course to give away about 99.96 percent of their wealth.

RECOGNITION

In 1987, Gates was listed as a billionaire in Forbes magazine's 400 Richest People in America issue. He was worth $1.25 billion and was the world's youngest self-made billionaire. Time magazine named Gates one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th century, as well as one of the 100 most influential people of 2004, 2005, and 2006. In 1994, he was honored as the twentieth Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society. In 1999, Gates received New York Institute of Technology's President's Medal.^[141] 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.^[147] He was also made an honorary trustee of Peking University in 2007.

Gates was made an Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005. In November 2006, he was awarded the Placard of the Order of the Aztec Eagle, together with his wife Melinda who was awarded the Insignia of the same order, both for their philanthropic work around the world in the areas of health and education, particularly in Mexico, and specifically in the program "Un país de lectores". Gates received the 2010 Bower Award for Business Leadership from The Franklin Institute for his achievements at Microsoft and his philanthropic work. Also in 2010, he was honored with the Silver Buffalo Award by the Boy Scouts of America, its highest award for adults, for his service to youth.

LESSONS

1. Adding value to others is the true essence of wealth.

Most people see riches as the hallmark of success. While this notion varies from one individual to another, being philanthropic is a lifelong tradition for Bill Gates.

To the billionaire, reducing global suffering and helping others rise above the slums of poverty is the greatest service anyone could possible offer to the world.

In his own words,

“I’ve been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that’s kind of a religious belief. I mean, it’s at least a moral belief.”

Bill Gates is the co-chairman of Bill & Melinda Gates foundation which was launched in 2000.  The foundation is said to be the largest transparently operated private foundation in the world which is aimed at enhancing healthcare, reduce extreme poverty and to expand educational opportunities.

As of 2013, Bill Gates had donated $28 billion to the foundation and had earlier announce to donate 95% of his wealth to charity. This is worthy of emulation.

2. Failure and mistakes are very valuable.

While most people only celebrate success and consider failure as a fatal, Bill Gates thinks otherwise. He once said, Consider the founding years of Microsoft and how tough it must had been for Bill as such situations are prevalent in the business sphere. Bill Gates must have encountered pressing situations and a few bumps along the way that could have made anyone quit.

These hellacious circumstances, disappointments and lots of mistakes mixed with failure didn’t deter Bill Gates.

As the vast majority of great achievers would, he viewed failure and mistakes as an opportunity to learn something new and improve his expertise. You should too.

It doesn’t matter how much mistakes you’ve made or the number of setbacks you’ve encountered, persistence never goes unpaid. Learn from your mistakes and pick yourself up afresh.

3. Do not be distracted by success

Though the philanthropist has achieved a lot, he’s still very much at his game. He said,

“If I’d had some set idea of a finish line don’t you think I would have crossed it years ago?” 

Bill Gates is no doubt considered as one of the greatest achievers in the world. The billionaire and philanthropist have been blessed to experience prodigious success most would only deem as phantasm.

He has headed the largest PC software company in the world and held the top spot on the list of “The World’s Billionaires” for 18 out of the past 23 years! These and many of his numerous achievements definitely places him at the top of the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Even with such record of success,  Bill Gates doesn’t seem undeterred by his outstanding accomplishments.

After choosing to step down from the top executive seat at Microsoft, Gates is still very much in business as he is currently heading both Cascade Investment and Branded Entertainment Network. Therefore, do not allow past success make you lose your focus. Progress should be a continual process.

4. Time is more valuable than money .

Bill Gates understand the wisdom in properly prioritizing tasks that are more likely to yield the most productive results of time spent.  Gates once said,

“No matter how much money you have, you can’t buy time.”

With many years of experience in the entrepreneurial niche, Bill Gates has mastered the art of prioritizing and maintaining focus only on commitments that matter to him the most. He might not attend a meeting he doesn’t deem important, but would rather take the time to communicate with the people closest to him.

Time spent unwisely can never be gotten back. Therefore make it your utmost goal to enjoy the time you have by spending it on tasks/people that matters most to you.

 So here you have it, am sure you can see the very reason why i called Mr Gates the Hulk of the modern era, his philanthropic project is saving humanity in every way possible, i pray and hope that this article will not only motivate you but also motivate me to even be more than Bill Gates and be more charitable than he is. I can confidently say that if every rich man was as charitable as Gates is, the world would be save from poverty. Please if you liked this article, share us with your friends and don’t forget to drop your comments, so we can serve you better.