Think. Believe. Become

LIFELIFEBUSIN SSI

VOL 1 | NO 5 | NOVEMBER 2014

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BILL GATES

The Man Behind The Machine?

THINK. BELIEVE.BECOME

SPECIAL ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

NoteLifeLong

Alfred Ade-Ijimakinwa

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3

As the Plane touched down in Murtala Mohammed

Airport in Lagos, I had one single purpose in

mind—to see the finished maiden edition of

BusinessIQ Magazine. When I held a copy in my hands, I

closed my eyes, placed it on my chest with my left hand

wrapped around it and sighed because the dream of many

years had finally came to pass.

Yes, it was a dream or perhaps a journey that started some

fourteen years ago in a local church. It was during the long

holiday away from school in 1993 and we were spending

most of our time in the church mastering our skills, learning

how to play drum-set, guitar, piano, saxophone and trumpet.

On a particular day, we were bored and decided to create our

own magazine.

Perhaps computer existed before then, but we had never seen

one. So, we wrote all the articles we deemed necessary to be

in the magazine. They were all handwritten. We cut out

pictures from newspapers and magazines, hoping to use

them in our own magazine. And within five weeks, we were

ready to visit a printing press.

We went to a local printing press but our excitement was

turned into sadness. The Print Consultant told us three

significant things we must do. One, we have to find a typist to

typeset all the articles we wrote. Back then, to employ the

services of a typist would cost a fortune . Two, we have to

get the original pictures of all the pictures we cut out from

newspapers and magazines. And thirdly, it will cost eleven

thousand naira to print a thousand copies of the magazine.

This was the biggest setback for the team of three because

our dads’ monthly salaries, if added together, is less than the

amount needed to get the magazine done. We left the Printing

Press disappointed.

Standing in front of the church, Opeyemi Olajide who was

holding the handmade magazine threw it into a ditch. Ehis

Oyaletor quickly picked it. Perhaps he couldn't stand our

hard work been washed down the drain. He took the

handmade magazine home and that was the last time I saw it.

For me, that was the defining moment; a moment that

began my endless romance and strong desire to own a

magazine.

Like Michael Jordan who admitted to have missed more

than 9, 000 shots, lost almost 300 games on 26 occasions,

I have failed several times, trying to create my own

magazine. The significant failure I cannot forget was

when we had finished the design and layout of Z-

Quarterly magazine on a graphics designer's computer,

but the Hard Drive suddenly crashed. He lost every

single data in the Drive. It was like a killer punch, but the

disappointment gave birth to BusinessIQ magazine that

you are reading today.

Fast forward into 2009, I worked tirelessly, night and

day, to create my own magazine. After I handed over the

finished work to my Print Consultant, I left for

Johannesburg in South Africa knowing that when I return

I would be holding in my hands my very own lifelong

dream—my magazine. And of course, I did.

Today, it's been 5 years since we launched BusinessIQ

magazine. However, this too could have been a mere

fantasy without the team who gave their hearts to keep it

alive. For this reason, this issue is dedicated to the entire

team and those who believe in BusinessIQ. Thank you.

Dream

BILL GATES

The Man Behind The Machine?

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His name is as unique as the brand he created in the technology industry. He is labeled as a business magnate,

philanthropist, investor, inventor and computer programmer. He was formerly the chief executive and chairman of the world largest personal computer software company which he co-founded with an older friend, Paul Allen, in 1975. The launch of his own company began his romance with computer software that would later place him in the rank of the wealthiest people in the world. And from 1995 to 2011 (excluding 2008 when he ranked third), he was ranked the wealthiest in the world. This position he would later assume in October 2014. Here is the success story of Bill Gates, a college drop-out who became the wealthiest and a force to reckon with in the business world.

Bill Gates known as William Gates III or Trey was born in Seattle in Washington to William and Mary Gates, who were upper-middle-class family. His father was a prominent lawyer and his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way.

Bill at the age of 13 enrolled in the Lakeside School, an exclusive preparatory school. When he was in eighth grade, the School bought a Teletype Model 33 ASR terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric computer for the students. This was when Bill Gates took interest in programming the GE system in BASICS and was frequently excused from mathematics classes to pursue his first interest—programming. It was on this machine that he wrote his first computer program, which is an implantation of tic-tac-toe that allowed users—other students—to play games against the computer.

After the block of computer time was exhausted, Bill and other students sought time on a system called PDP-10, a minicomputer belonging to the Computer Center Corporation (CCC). Bill, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland and Kent Evans, all from Lakeside School were later banned for summer after they were caught exploiting bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time. After the ban, these four students offered to find bugs in CCC's software in exchange for computer time. This gave Bill the opportunity to visit the offices of CCC to study source code for various programs that ran on the system. The programs he studied include FORTRAN, Lisp and machine language. The arrangement of visiting CCC's offices continued until 1970 when the company went out of business.

In 1971, the four Lakeside students were hired by

Information Sciences Inc. to write a payroll program in COBOL. The boys were provided with computer time and royalties. At this point, the school administrators became aware of Bill's programming abilities, he was told to write a program to schedule students in classes. And Bill, who sees himself as a demigod modified the code, placing himself in classes with a disproportionate number of interesting girls. He would later state it that it was hard to tear himself away from a machine at which he could so unambiguously demonstrate success.

At the age of 17, Bill formed a venture with his friend (Paul Allen) and they called it Traf-O-Data. The venture makes traffic counters based on Intel 8008 processor. Bill Gates would later graduate from Lakeside School in 1973 where he scored 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT and enrolled at Harvard in the autumn. It was in Harvard that he met Steve Ballmer who would later succeed him as the CEO of Microsoft.

During his sophomore year, Gates devised an algorithm for pancake sorting and a solution to one of a series of unsolved problems presented in a class by one of his professors, Harry Lewis. Gates's solution held the record as the fastest version for more than thirty years. His solution would later be formalized in a published paper in collaboration with Harvard computer scientist Christos

Papadimitriou.

While in Harvard, Gates had no particular study plan. He spent most of his time using the school's computers. During the summer of 1974, he joined his friend, Paul Allen who he had remained in contact with at the Honeywell, a company where Paul Allen was working. The following year, the MITS Altair 8800 based on the Intel 8080 CPU was released. This excited Gates and Allen as they saw an opportunity for them to start their own computer software company. Gate would later drop out of Harvard after having a long discussion with his parents who supported his decision, seeing how enthusiastic Gates was to start his own company. After reading the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics that demonstrated the Altair 8800, Gates contacted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), the creators of the new microcomputer, to inform them that he and others were working on a BASIC interpreter for the platform. In reality, Gates and Allen did not have an Altair and had not written code for it; they merely wanted to gauge MITS's interest. MITS president Ed Roberts agreed to meet them for a demo, and over the course of a few weeks they tirelessly worked day and night to develop an Altair emulator that ran on a minicomputer, and then the BASIC interpreter. The demonstration, held at MITS's offices in Albuquerque, was a

success and resulted in a deal with MITS to distribute the interpreter as Altair BASIC. Paul Allen was hired into MITS and Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard to work with Allen at MITS in Albuquerque in November 1975. They named their partnership "Micro-Soft" and had their first office located in Albuquerque. Within a year, the hyphen was dropped, and on November 26, 1976, the trade name "Microsoft" was registered with the Office of the Secretary of the State of New Mexico. Gates never returned to Harvard to complete his studies.

Microsoft's BASIC became popular with computer hobbyists, but Gates discovered that a pre-market copy had leaked into the community and was being widely copied and distributed. In February 1976, Gates wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists in the MITS newsletter saying that MITS could not continue to produce, distribute, and maintain high-quality software without payment. This letter was unpopular with many computer hobbyists, but Gates persisted in his belief that software developers should be able to demand payment. Microsoft became independent of MITS in late 1976, and it continued to develop programming language software for various systems. The company moved from Albuquerque to its new home in Bellevue, Washington on January 1, 1979.

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During Microsoft's early years, all employees had broad responsibility for the company's business. Gates oversaw the business details, but continued to write code as well. In the first five years, Gates personally reviewed every line of code the company shipped, and often rewrote parts of it as he saw fit.

In July 1080, IBM approached Microsoft regarding its upcoming personal computer, the IBM PC. The computer company first proposed that Microsoft write the BASIC interpreter. When IBM's representatives mentioned that they needed an operating system, Gates referred them to Digital Research (DRI), makers of the widely used CP/M operating system. IBM's discussions with Digital Research went poorly, and they did not reach a licensing agreement. IBM representative Jack Sams mentioned the licensing difficulties during a subsequent meeting with Gates and told him to get an acceptable operating system. A few weeks later, Gates proposed using 86-DOS (QDOS), an operating system similar to CP/M that Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products (SCP) had made for hardware similar to the PC. Microsoft made a deal with SCP to become the exclusive licensing agent, and later the full owner of 86-DOS. After adapting the operating system for the PC, Microsoft delivered it to IBM as PC DOS in exchange for a one-time fee of $50,000.

Gates did not offer to transfer the copyright on the operating system, because he believed that other hardware vendors would clone IBM's system. And they did, and the sales of MS-DOS made Microsoft a major player in the industry. Despite IBM's name on the operating system the press quickly identified Microsoft as being very influential on the new computer, with PC Magazine asking if Gates was "The Man Behind The Machine?" He oversaw Microsoft's company restructuring on June 25, 1981, which re-incorporated the company in Washington State and made Gates President of Microsoft and the Chairman of the Board.

Microsoft launched its first retail version of Microsoft Windows on November 20, 1985, and in August, 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, mounting creative differences caused the partnership to deteriorate.

From Microsoft's founding in 1975 until 2006, Gates had primary responsibility for the company's product strategy. He aggressively

broadened the company's range of products, and wherever Microsoft achieved a dominant position he vigorously defended it. He gained a reputation for being distant to others; as early as 1981 an industry executive complained in public that "Gates is notorious for not being reachable by phone and for not returning phone calls." Another executive recalled that after he showed Gates a game and defeated him 35 of 37 times, when they met again a month later Gates "won or tied every game. He had studied the game until he solved it. That is a competitor.

As an executive, Gates met regularly with Microsoft's senior managers and program managers. Firsthand accounts of these meetings describe him as verbally combative, berating managers for perceived holes in their business strategies or proposals that placed the company's long-term interests at risk.

He has interrupted presentations with such comments "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!" and, "Why don't you just give up your options and join the Peace Corps?" The target of his outburst then had to defend the proposal in detail until, hopefully, Gates was fully convinced. When subordinates appeared to be procrastinating, he was known to remark sarcastically, "I'll do it over the weekend."

Gates's role at Microsoft for most of its history was

primarily a management and executive role. However, he was an active software developer in the early years, particularly on the company's programming language products. He has not officially been on a development team since working on the TRS-80 Model 100, but wrote code as late as 1989 that shipped in the company's products. On June 15, 2006, Gates announced that he would transition out of his day-to-day role over the next two years to dedicate more time to philanthropy. He divided his responsibilities between two successors, placing Ray Ozzie in charge of day-to-day management and Craig Mundie in charge of long-term product strategy.

Since leaving day-to-day operations at Microsoft, Gates continues his philanthropy and, among other projects, purchased the video rights to the Messenger Lectures series called The Character of Physical Law, given at Cornell University by Richard Feynman in 1964 and recorded by the BBC. The videos are available online to the public at Microsoft's Project Tuva. In April 2010, Gates was invited to visit and speak at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he asked the students to take on the difficult problems of the world in their futures.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Gates was the world's highest-earning billionaire in 2013, as his fortune increased by US$15.8 billion to US$78.5 billion. As of January 2014,

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most of Gates's assets are held in Cascade Investment LLC, an entity through which he owns stakes in numerous businesses, including Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, and Corbis Corp. On February 4, 2014, Gates stepped down as Chairman of Microsoft to become Technology Advisor alongside Satya Nadella.

In a substantial interview with Rolling Stone magazine, published in the March 27, 2014 issue, Gates provided his perspective on a range of issues, such as climate change, his charitable activities, various tech companies and people involved in them, and the state of America. In response to a question about his greatest fear when he looks 50 years into the future, Gates stated: "... there'll be some really bad things that'll happen in the next 50 or 100 years, but hopefully none of them on the scale of, say, a million people that you didn't expect to die from a pandemic, or nuclear or bioterrorism." Gates also identified innovation as the "real driver of progress" and pronounced that "America's way better today than it's ever been."

Gates was number one on the Forbes 400 list from 1993 through to 2007 and number one on Forbes list of The World's Richest People from 1995 to 2007 and 2009. In 1999, his wealth briefly surpassed $101 billion, causing the media to call Gates a "centibillionaire". Despite his wealth and extensive

business travel Gates usually flew coach until 1997, when he bought a private jet. Since 2000, the nominal value of his Microsoft holdings has declined due to a fall in Microsoft's stock price after the dot-com bubble burst and the multi-billion dollar donations he has made to his charitable foundations. In a May 2006 interview, Gates commented that he wished that he was not the richest man in the world because he disliked the attention it brought. In March 2010, Gates was the second wealthiest person behind Carlos Slim, but regained the top position in 2013 according to the Bloomberg Billionaires List. Carlos Slim retook the position again in June 2014.

Gates has several investments outside Microsoft, which in 2006 paid him a salary of $616,667 and $350,000 bonus totaling $966,667. He founded Corbis, a digital imaging company, in 1989. In 2004 he became a director of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company headed by long-time friend Warren Buffett.

Gates studied the work of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, and in 1994 sold some of his Microsoft stock to create the "William H. Gates Foundation." In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three family foundations 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 US$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.

Gates has credited the generosity and extensive philanthropy of David Rockefeller as a major influence. Gates and his father met with Rockefeller several times, and their charity work is partly modeled on the Rockefeller family's philanthropic focus, whereby they are interested in tackling the global problems that are ignored by governments and other organizations. As of 2007, Bill and Melinda Gates were the second-most generous philanthropists in America, having given over US$28 billion to charity; the couple plan to eventually donate 95 percent of their wealth to charity.

Gates's wife urged people to learn a lesson from the philanthropic efforts of the Salwen family, which had sold its home and given away half of its value, as detailed in The Power of Half. Gates and his wife invited Joan Salwen to Seattle to speak about what the family had done, and on December 9, 2010, Gates, investor Warren Buffett, and

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Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg signed a commitment they called the "Gates-Buffet Giving Pledge." The pledge is a commitment by all three to donate at least half of their wealth over the course of time to charity.

Gates has also provided personal donations to educational institutions. In 1999 Gates donated US$20 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for the construction of a computer laboratory named the "William H. Gates Building" that was designed by architect Frank O. Gehry. While Microsoft had previously given financial support to the institution, this was the first personal donation received from Gates.

The Maxwell Dworkin Laboratory of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is named after the mothers of both Gates and Microsoft President Steven A. Ballmer, both of whom were students (Ballmer was a member of the School's graduating class of 1977, while Gates left his studies for Microsoft), and donated funds for the laboratory's construction. Gates also donated US$6 million to the construction of the Gates Computer Science Building, completed in January 1996, on the campus of Stanford University. The building contains the Computer Science Department (CSD) and the Computer Systems Laboratory (CSL) of Stanford's Engineering department.

Other business ventures and investments that Bill Gate owned are:

? Cascade Investments LLC, a private inves tmen t and ho ld ing company,

incorporated in United States, is controlled by Bill Gates, and is headquartered in the city of Kirkland, Washington.

? bgC3, a new think-tank company founded by Bill Gates.

? Corbis, a digital image licensing and rights services company.

? TerraPower, a nuclear reactor design company.

? Research Gate, a social networking site for scientists. Gates has invested $35 million in the site.

To date, Bill Gates has authored two books:

? The Road Ahead, written with Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold and journalist Peter Rinearson, was published in November 1995. It summarized the implications of the personal computing revolution and described a future profoundly changed by the arrival of a global information superhighway.

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

Credit: Wikipedia