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Paul Allen the 'Accidental Zillionaire'
An anonymous reader writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has an interesting story about Paul Allen, "the accidental zillionaire". Allen is the owner of the world's biggest private yacht and a huge landowner in the Seattle area in addition to his traditional accolades of helping to found Microsoft along with several other companies and foundations."
zillionaire - more money than what?
Jeebus.
Anyways, I would hardly call it "accidential". It wasn't any accident that Microsoft got to license their OS to the IBM (and compatible) machines, it was cold and calculated. While they might not have known they'd end up being some of the richest people to have ever lived, they had to have known that they were never going to have to worry about money again in their lives.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Investing in the right company means he did something right.. That also means that he was not a rich man by accident.
Still I wonder why so many geeks are online on x-mas. Oh wait, I am too.
NO CARRIER
Anyways, I would hardly call it "accidential". It wasn't any accident that Microsoft got to license their OS to the IBM (and compatible) machines, it was cold and calculated. While they might not have known they'd end up being some of the richest people to have ever lived, they had to have known that they were never going to have to worry about money again in their lives.
Since early 1980's? Probably they knew that. But in early 1970's, Allen and Gates were just a couple of nerdy students, sharing a belief that the future is in household computers. While in that age everyone else shared a belief that a "computer" is meant to be maintained and operated only by specially trained staff wearing laboratory overalls. Yes, their deal with IBM was no accident but in order to get that deal, they had to establish their position in the 8-bit personal computing world - writing BASIC for Altair and Apple, and lot of stuff for CP/M (originally that was the IBM's system of choice for their first PC). That was largely an accident - lots of companies active in the 8-bit market (such as Altair or Digital Research, makers of the CP/M) simply didn't make it in 1980's.
Well, I don't know that I'd call it accidental, but there was a rather significant luck factor involved; if Gary Kildall had pursued the opportunity (and there are several stories about why he didn't - ranging from opting to fly his plane instead of meet with IBM to refusing to sign an NDA; according to Gordon Eubanks, Kildall just wasn't interested in porting CP/M to the 8088 processor). If Seattle Computer Products hadn't sold QDOS to MicroSoft, things also would have been pretty different.
Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
What really made the PC ubiquitously popular was Compaq's reverse-engineering of the IBM BIOS. This meant that you no longer had to pay top dollar for something that was truly IBM compatible. This, coupled with the adoption of the ISA bus by all of the PC manufacturers, is what made the PC the king of the hill. All of a sudden, Intel (and others) had a real incentive to make faster, more capable CPUs (because IBM wasn't the only game in town anymore for the x86), and because of standards like the ISA bus, card manufacturers had a broader audience to develop things like SoundBlaster. It was because of this opening up of the hardware to virtually anyone that the PC became popular. It had absolutely nothing to do with Microsoft or DOS. Remember, also, that Microsoft also produced the BASIC in every single Commodore 8-bit computer from the PET through the 128, and so they made money on the millions of those sold, in addition to MS-DOS/PC-DOS.
Chance favors the prepared mind.
They were lucky, but they also had some idea of what they were getting into. Taking advantage of an opportunity means recognizing that you have an opportunity to take advantage of.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dougneedham