Slashdot Mirror
Why You Shouldn't Imitate Bill Gates If You Want To Be Rich (bbc.com)
dryriver writes: BBC Capital has an article that debunks the idea of "simply doing what highly successful people have done to get rich," because many of those "outliers" got rich under special circumstances that are not possible to replicate. An excerpt: "Even if you could imitate everything Gates did, you would not be able to replicate his initial good fortune. For example, Gates's upper-class background and private education enabled him to gain extra programming experience when less than 0.01% of his generation then had access to computers. His mother's social connection with IBM's chairman enabled him to gain a contract from the then-leading PC company that was crucial for establishing his software empire. This is important because most customers who used IBM computers were forced to learn how to use Microsoft's software that came along with it. This created an inertia in Microsoft's favor. The next software these customers chose was more likely to be Microsoft's, not because their software was necessarily the best, but because most people were too busy to learn how to use anything else. Microsoft's success and marketshare may differ from the rest by several orders of magnitude but the difference was really enabled by Gate's early fortune, reinforced by a strong success-breeds-success dynamic."
https://xkcd.com/1827/
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
scruples didn't hurt. He had little problem with raiding others ideas and pushing them out of the market. Many of the things he did to get on top of the pile would be actionable today.
Step 1 to being like BG has nothing to do with his exact circumstances. It has to do with making use of YOUR special circumstances effectively. Capitalizing on each situatiin and conpunding the gains
The Misconception: You should focus on the successful if you wish to become successful.
The Truth: When failure becomes invisible, the difference between failure and success may also become invisible.
Survivorship Bias; You Are Not So Smart
So I shouldn't have a extremely wealthy family, who is well connected, and further take vast sums of money to start a business - and if it fails just take even more money to try again? I'm pretty sure that is possibly the single most consistent detail of the success stories of the super wealthy.
I was very active in startups between 1995 and 2000. Many entrepreneurs made a lot of money, and many lost the money again, because after the trick that earned them the cash, they thought they were pretty smart and wanted to replicate the success by investing in newer startups. Then they found out the hard way it wasn't how smart or special they are that made them successful at first, but that they were at the right place at the right time.
Are the keys to success. College dropouts who succeed are outliers, as the vast majority of successful people, are people who were able to combine a stronger education with hard work.
I have always wondered about connections between Bill Gates and William Gates/Robert Gates.....
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
To get rich you need three things.
Hard work - Don't discount this. Yes, connections and money make things easier, but it still takes work. A lot of it.
Intelligence - Hardest work on the planet won't always get you further.
Sheer flat out luck - Being the hardest working smart person doesn't help if you get a crippling illness or just at the wrong time. Being born wealthy or with connections is genetic lottery.
You pretty much need a lot of all three to get super wealthy. Two will get you into a decent place and you'll do fine.
Do imitate Bill Gates, but imitate the right aspects.
- Enter a field which your background gives you ready access to when others have limited access
- Use connections to get work where you can
- Provide skills which others are less-able to
- Come up with something to be a "first mover" on, and do that.
Whether or not you want to get rich, that's just good life advice.
Because Bill Gates didn't do any ACTUAL work or have any programming knowledge or was a total nerd or could negotiate properly or even present not only a workable solution and product to IBM but one that was SUCCESSFUL.
He just got it all because mommy and daddy bought it for him.
Luck and opportunity is a factor in EVERY successful decision in life including work, wealth AND love and happiness. But without the self-improvement, the desire to achieve and the actual HARD WORK you will NEVER be successful - even if mommy and daddy keep trying to buy it for you.
For some zesty penis = success?
Success in general is statistical and not deterministic. Ask any venture investor who supports dozens of startups. Look at hedge funds creating investment portfolios of various risks.
You can do everything determenistically right as everybody else and achieve the same results, but in this case (your success) = (total wealth on that pass) / (number of people who follow that pattern of behavior)
You may take risk and try something else, but in that case you don't know final (total wealth) on the pass you choose and it may be just ZERO, since you are pioneer and your results are not known yet.
Now we are coming to general concepts of free market economy and social lifts in society. At the moment social lifts are all time worst. Any new business in recent decades stays unprofitable for 10-20 years, supported by venture capitals, that means if you try to start something yourself without investors money expect to work for free for 10 years at least, before you achieve minimal visibility on the market. if you go for investors money, that means rich stay rich you you will stay where you are.
Who writes these trash articles. In America if you succeed you can become wealthy. Plain and simple. Nobody does it for you or gives you and advantage. Everyone is on an equal playing field. Everyone!
How about being like Steve Jobs? Or like Larry Ellison? Or like Sergey Brin? How about the millions of tech millionaires that came to the US as immigrants, often growing up poor? The real "privilege" that Bill Gates had was that he came from an intact, high IQ, two parent family that valued education and hard work. It probably also helped that he got out of the soul crushing US public education system early.
The real reason that you shouldn't try to be like Bill Gates is simply that trying to become a billionaire requires taking lots of risky bets. But becoming a multimillionaire is something pretty much any family can prepare their children for, provided the parents make the right choices early on.
...poor gets poorer. News at 11.
The illusion that yu can jump social layers is like that of lotteries. Yes, someone sometimes wins a prize, but remember: the chances are less than to be struck by lightning while playing golf... for which you gotta be rich in the first place.
You'll be super rich and successful too, honest. Just listen to all the successful people who believe this...
Sure, hard work is part of it, but as this article points out it is only part of it. Coming from the correct womb and happening to be in the right place at the right time seems to have a lot more to do with it.
There are plenty of people who work their asses off and get no where.
Kid in slums - rap music - it has happened
Charisma - tony robbins
Getting the right people - steve jobs
Yes, 99% of people cant find their special purpose that's why they are 1%. Most 1%ers have an obvious special circumadtance, but Navin R Johnson found his special purpose, You can too!
It's like 1-800-flowers.
They are the 4th largest company in the USA doing this. It started in 2006 I think. He said he'd never be able to do the same startup today. He struck early enough that he could enter the market. Today it is saturated. Timing is a big part of it.
Imagine Warren Buffett if he were born on an island where hunting skill was valuable. He'd be poor. The best hunter would be the wealthy one. Don't ignore the place you live.
It is true that there are a lot of people that claim that since monopolists are successful and charge high prices for poor products, you can become successful by charging high prices for a poor product. That generally doesn't work for non-monopolists. On the other hand, the emphasis on Bill G's parents does ignore the fact that IBM offered the same opportunity to Digital Research, which turned them down. And IBM offered a word processor of its own - can't have more advantages than that - and it failed in the marketplace. It also offered an OS - what happened to that? Maybe it was higher quality than Windows, but it was 10 times as expensive and the only print driver it came with was for a single dot-matrix printer.
You forgot to add time and the ability to work hard uninterrupted without money while it takes time for the hard work to deliver. Hopefully any family commitments or responsibilities don't interfere while this is in process. It could take a lifetime to build real wealth.
Also you need to be pretty well educated with access to capital, McDonald's workers also work hard but that's not getting them far.
Don't imitate the dropping out of college part.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
BS, unless you live in a hole in Botswana you have education readily available. If you want to know something "innately", just pay attention in school, at work, in nature.
There are charismatic people everywhere, poor or rich. People throw their bodies at "cool/charismatic" men and women every day. From a pimp to a preacher, to a narcissitic CEO or politician- charisma gets you anywhere you want to be on rails.
You can start a nonprofit with nothing, con volunteers into giving you free labor and build an empire fast. Knowing how to put the right people together with no capital outlay is a pretty common way to move up.
I can't believe people actually think like your post reads. I guess that explains why so many people work for $10/hr and never reach for anything else. Then bitch about not having opportunities?
It was Microsoft BASIC that was shipping in most brands of home computers that attracted IBM's attention. He didn't even approach IBM about DOS, it was IBM that approached him leaving him to fib and scramble to purchase the rights.
I really doubt it was his mother's social connections when he was already an established player in an industry that IBM was trying to enter/overthrow.
Bill Gates did have a bit of luck. But that accounts for the difference between being a billionaire, and being the richest man in the world.
He has certain personality traits that make him successful in business. You see this amongst a lot of successful people. A lot of it comes down to arrogance, competitiveness, and aggression, as well as a a certain level of intelligence, and low aversion to risk. You'll see this in other people who are successful too. Not just other silicon valley millionaires, like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg but people like Richard Branson, and Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad. It's a mentality thing.
All lies ! Bill Gates got were he got at his own merit, nobody else's. He could do it again. You can drop people like Bill Gates in the middle of the fucking desert when they are a baby and they will still be fucking rich in the end. It's completely their own merit and skills
I'm always amazed at how many people actually believe this shit...
Again, playing the lottery has higher success rates than that.
This is basically what's wrong in the country today. Until not so long ago, you could actually get to a comfortable life by being productive, working hard, giving something useful to the community. Not rich, mind you, that still took a lot of luck, that special "right place at the right time" kind of luck. But you could actually get somewhere. A single working person in a family of 4 could sustain them. Buy a house, have a car, see your kids grow up right, all that stuff. That actually worked out.
Somewhere in the last 40ish years that changed. Today, both parents HAVE TO work just to make ends meet. And you're not getting anywhere, it doesn't improve, you work your ass off and it's not going anywhere. You rent a tiny apartment because buying a house is simply out of the question. Where you used to progress slowly but steadily, you now struggle just to stay afloat.
The american dream is dead. Or rather, it changed. It went from "work, innovate, become your own boss and you too can one day be rich" to "screw that, play the lottery and hope for the best".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Choose your parents well.
Malcom Gladwell pointed this out in his book tipping point several years ago. Bill Joy of Sun fame and Steve Jobs were similarly situated and owe a great deal of their success to their starting position on the chess board.
I have a book on how to become rich. It is written you have to write down your reasons to become rich, and start making written plans, and praying God to make your enterprise sucessfull. Good luck !
I can jump a chair
Task Mangler
This article is a rehash of material written almost 10 years ago by Malcolm Gladwell. It's a nice reminder, but news it ain't....
Opportunist is a total loser, like most here. Why else would they be here?
How do McDonald's workers work hard? Is it the same working hard as someone who lays bricks or someone who spends 80 hours a week studying differential topology in a library or 90 hours a week alone in a basement writing data analysis software?
1> Have to be born in to it.
2> Be EXTREMELY lucky.
3> Not have any empathy when it comes to stepping on others.
Outside of that anything anyone else will tell you is complete bull because if they are already rich they certainly don't want you figuring it out and taking away their piece of the pie. That being said, if you aren't rich, your cattle for those that are to herd around economically.
success isn't a game "most people" win. Success doesn't care if everyone gets it or no one gets it. The story is about the possibility of success occurring again, not probability.
"...NCR assigned Watson to run the struggling NCR agency in Rochester, New York. As an agent, he got 35% commission and reported directly to Hugh Chalmers, the second-in-command at NCR. In four years Watson made Rochester effectively an NCR monopoly by using the technique of knocking the main competitor, Hallwood, out of business, sometimes resorting to sabotage of the competitor's machines.[6] As a reward he was called to the NCR head office in Dayton, Ohio.[4]
"In 1912, the company was found guilty of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. Patterson, Watson, and 26 other NCR executives and managers were convicted for illegal anti-competitive sales practices and were sentenced to one year of imprisonment".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Yes, emulate Watson by all means. But make sure you have some good lawyers - and, above all, invest in some legislators.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Depends what your definition of "success" is.
Owning a house, a car and being able to sustain your immediate family by yourself is now falling very much into the definition of "successful". 40 years ago it was "standard"; nowadays it's "successful".
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Once you get to middle class status, which in the US you can do on two college level salaries, you are less willing to "risk it all" to get 10x wealthier.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Yes the thing is most success is simply based on luck and also with how much money your parents give you and their connections. But mostly it is being at the right time at the right place with the right product. For every successful businessman there are million of others who failed, but not necessarly because they where bad but because they just where at the wrong time. If being successfull was only based on how much you where willing to work hard there would millions of Bill Gates running around.
...unless you live in a hole in Botswana you have education readily available. If you want to know something "innately", just pay attention in school...
WTF are you talking about? That's a big, crowded hole. 57 million children isn't a huge piece of the population, but it's a hell of a lot more than a "hole in Botswana".
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Watson basically came clean out of that because he gave a lot to a local charity when there was some sort of natural disaster. I think he never served his sentence.
What about those of us who want to imitate Bill Gates' life?!
I want to start with being born a son of the richest banking family in the state of Washington. After all, being born rich is a good way to tweak the odds of success in life.
The problem with my plan is Doc forgot the flux capacitor and so the time machine won't work...
I call BS.
Both partners in a family "have" to work because they are not satisfied with what people not so long ago had. The problem is plain old greed.
In 1981 the average house size was 1720 square feet. Average house size in 2017 2700 square feet. The number of people in 1981 that lived there? 3.4. In 2017 2.5.
For most of my life as a kid we had one car and one TV. Now almost everyone over 16 in most families has a car (at least outside New York City). A lot of homes have a TV in just about every room except the bathroom (and they make special ones for in there.)
And it goes on and on.
My wife stopped working when our youngest was born. I have a house which is almost paid for, and never went underwater because I bought within my means and paid off a good percentage down when I bought it. I don't buy a new car until the one I have stops working. I pay cash almost always or have a plan when I barrow (often getting 0% or below market).
I didn't borrow money to go to school, I let Uncle Sam (G.I. Bill) and my employer pay for that. (Got 3 Masters degrees.)
I flat out did without if I couldn't afford it and still do if I don't need it and can't pay for it now.
I've been lucky too, but often being lucky only helps if you're prepared to act on that luck.
If you come from a poor family the best thing you can do is take advantage of the free education every American has up through high school. Do that and you'll probably find someone willing to pay for your college. It does mean actually working for good grades and actually giving up time wasting activities and loser friends.
No, no, you don't want to disrupt the narrative that Bill Gates was the most evil man in human history that engaged in the most brutal of business practices right out of the Joe Stalin playbook. Really folks, I would never say the guy was a saint but there was a lot of market forces at play that tend to go unacknowledged in the PC story, and Gates may have played a little hardball, but he was hardly the Mafia Don that he is often portrayed as. ( As for that Anti Trust suite in the 90s I heard some of the stupidest technical discussions ever about the "browser market" as if it was a platonic entity that necessarily existed, and that by giving away IE MS was doing something evil. Really.) Now Gates is giving away Billions after Billions in Charitable causes and urging other successful billionaires to to the same. Bad Bill.
The Microsoft monopoly was unbreakable because it empowered the strategic military goals of the country in ways that had never been imagined. When the Secretary of Defense travels across the country to visit you in your office, you can be pretty sure your on the right track.
Some would argue that this is why Windows 10 continues to grow.
WHAT?? Being born on third base makes it easier to get home? YOU DON'T SAY?!?
OK, how do I become charismatic? I do well enough. I have a wife and son I love very much, and I have some very good friends. I'm not inspirational. I can't read people enough to feed them what they want. (There was a time, before I was married, when I would have loved to have women throw their bodies at me.) If I can't learn to be charismatic, then knowing where charisma can get me does me no good.
Since I don't have much charisma, and can't catch the flying bodies and put them to work for me, I don't see how I'm going to get a nonprofit going that will catapult me into the big time.
Unless you're unusually smart (I am), anything you can learn, lots of other people can learn also. This puts you in a competitive market without a significant advantage, and you're not going to get rich that way.
Most people aren't rich. If you are rich, there's one or more reasons for that. The reasons could be that you were born upper-class, that you're really lucky, or that you had exceptional (not ordinary) ability.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
(from the grandparent post)
They were forced, forced, I tell you. They would have much preferred to use a console version of JCL, but nooooo! They had to learn PC-DOS/MS-DOS.
Yeah, yeah, Slashdot blah blah Unix (Linux didn't yet exist). DOS was pretty much a clone of TOPS-10 or any of a number of Digital Equipment Corporation OS's from the standpoint of the commands. The story was that young Mr. Gates stole online time on a PDP-10 timesharing service to become proficient in coding.
I used PDP-8, PDP-11 and PDP-10 computers in school as well as my first engineering job out of school, and DOS was a very easy transition once I hacked that drive letter thing. Unix/Linux, not so much.
never ask for forgiveness.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Did IBM offer the same deal to Digital Research, or did Gates get a better deal than they would have?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I find people who have a life goal of "being rich" pitiable.
I really need to know all of the other things I shouldn't do if I want to become rich.
Gates started out ahead of most people (not his fault) and was very successful. His "success" continued through shady (at best) business practices. There are lots of other rich people out there who have done similar things. He's super-rich, to the point that a million dollars is like $10 to you and me.
I really would like to have enough money to not have to worry about it - but I am not about to resort to what it would take to maybe get it. Whether it is working 80 hour weeks, taking huge financial risks, foregoing seeing my kids grow up, being ruthlessly greedy, or being unethical. Sure, some people get rich without doing those things, but the only other one I have seen is what has been mentioned - being in the right place at the right time. I used to work for a guy who sold his internet company during the dot-com boom, and he made about $54MM. He started the company that I worked for, and he was a total ass. It eventually failed, but he is still doing just fine. He had so much cushion that the success or failure didn't really matter to him. His family was also extremely wealthy. I've also known people who struggled with startups and failed. The only difference between them was maybe timing and having a huge safety net to fall back on. So even if he hadn't sold his startup at the right time, he would be fine.
I don't chase money. Instead, I focus on trying to be happy. Money might make me happier, but I don't need to be rich. All of the people I've known who were wealthy, or wanted to be wealthy, were pretty much assholes.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Bing The Key. Figuring out what Special circumstances are happening and if they are an opportunity. But Not everyones Special circumstances can lead to riches. It is like cards. some days they just are not in your favor.
Microsoft was selling customized microcomputer BASICs to Fortune 500 clients in the mid seventies. MBASIC was the first product for the micro to reach a million dollars in sales. By 1980, Microsoft was offering a full suite of programming languages for CP/M and was moving into operating systems before being approached by IBM. The notion that Microsoft was am insignificant or invisible player in the industry before the IBM PC is just plain nonsense.
What Gates offered IBM was a serviceable and perhaps more importantly a uniquely affordable 16 Bit CP/M clone + MBASIC, etc., in time for the scheduled launch of the IBM PC. I doubt that the IBM PC team gave a damn how Gates sourced or developed the package so long as it was ready on time.
It is almost true that Gates was handed a franchise on a silver platter. Most significantly he knew exactly what he was getting and had the vision to see it to fruition.
His path to success included illegalities, including plagiarizing Novell's LOGIN.EXE program in a key part of Windows 3.11 (W4WG) authentication.
This was on the heels of scamming Stac corp out of the licensing rights for disk compression in DOS 6, essentially stealing a product.
The first version of "Microsoft Video for Windows" was also a stolen product, literally a line-for-line plagiarism of Apple's Quicktime. In this case the theft was performed by a Microsoft contractor who had a source license for Quicktime. IMHO it's completely implausible to suggest Microsoft didn't know about the theft before publishing.
People forget about these details, but they do remember Microsoft being declared "a monopoly" in court, and that a federal judge found that Microsoft had harmed consumers. Microsoft was preparing to be split up AT&T style but a presidential election spared them this fate, it was widely perceived at the time.
https://www.justice.gov/atr/competitive-processes-anticompetitive-practices-and-consumer-harm-software-industry-analysis
http://userwww.sfsu.edu/ibec/papers/36.pdf
Then they had to go and try to stake a claim on Linux, via their disingenuous proxy, the SCO Group.
IMHO the main reason not to imitate Bill Gates is that much of what he and his company did was morally wrong.
To be fair, a great many companies were and still are far worse morally, including many or possibly most large banks - and suc^H^H^H savers trust those with their money.
If you want to know something "innately", just pay attention in school, at work, in nature.
That is literally the opposite of "innate." It does however demonstrate the real key to success - pulling things out of your ass and convincing others that you speak the truth. That basically sums up the rest of your "special circumstances" too. Your path to success is probably more likely to lead to jail. No thanks, I'll take a comfortable life and a clean conscience over that any day.
There were always serious alternatives: Macintosh, Atari, Amiga and lots of minicomputer and mainframe systems.
People just liked to easily steal software (including myself) and the easiest way to do that was to use MSDOS.
...were in many ways superior to MSDOS. For starters, they had a linear address space instead of the BF. that was the x86 segmented memory model.
Maybe the children of Bill Gates can live like that - while they burn through the inherited wealth.
Gates certainly worked hard to get where he now is. The fact that he grew up in a wealthy household does not change this fact. Neither do his semi-criminal activities change that fact. The businessworld is full of sharks who operate at the borders to crime. But you cannot be lazy to achieve that. Hard work is one precondition for wealth.
Of course hard work in itself does not assure wealth. You must make intelligent decisions, be pragmatic and you must fight for YOUR products and services. Lots of lamer companies such as HP trashed their own products in favor of MS, Intel and Oracle products. Defeatism at work(TM).
You must be a fighter who sticks to your own ideas and strategies, even when you experience setbacks. MS had shitty products, but they would still stand behind them and improve them until they were better than the competition at similar pricing.
Ballmer was not the smartest guy, but he was a fighter, not a defeatist like senior HP figures.
BG could pay his employees in stock and did not report it as expenses to the. This loophole is closed.
I am sure BG would be very successful without exploitin this loophole. But he would not be that successful.
Many people avoid opportunities by allowing groupthink guide their decisions. Many people would have told their children to "join the safe company IBM", instead of taking the risks Gates took. And most young adults comply with that advice.
New business models require you to brush against the established groupthink. And it is hard to challenge the status quo. Many people have a load of reasons why they do not want to do that, including "social responsibility". I can hear the moaning against Uber here all the time. Are taxis so great ? No, Uber shakes up an inefficient industry, a monopoly.
Short version: Gates and the rich have access to capital poor people don't have because of laws passed and enforced by your communist governments.
Did he also "luck" into Windows NT ? Was it a coincidence he knew Dave Cutler was a top notch OS designer ?
He then proceeded to "luck into" Sybase to create MSSQL ?
Of course he is a mortal, of course he did a load of nasty business actions, but he also was a clever businessman who hired the people who could do he could not do himself. He amassed the capital to hire these first class people/teams. He knew how far he could cheat while not going to jail. It was not luck, it was great skill.
Watson basically came clean out of that because he gave a lot to a local charity when there was some sort of natural disaster. I think he never served his sentence.
That sounds like Gates too.
This created an inertia in Microsoft's favor.
Bah! not "inertia" but *momentum*. Inertia is the apparent result of conservation of momentum. We often think of inertia as 'resistance' to change in momentum, but really it is just the label we use for the idea that momentum won't change without application of a force.
Google: Search Engine. They were not even first, but fourth. They just applied state of the art techniques.
Facebook: Only the idea being somewhat innovative. Implementation straightforward
Both from almost no capital.
There's a whole series of articles on this at Naked Capitalism:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.co...
Uber Has Operating Losses of $2 Billion a Year, More Than Any Startup in History
Hating on Bill Gates and Microsoft is still alive and well on Slashdot after all these years. I guess it's the only thing the couple dozens of old farts that still use this site still have going on in their lives.
Gary Kildall of Digital Research was well-known within the industry for his CP/M operating system at the time and CP/M was the obvious first choice for IBM PC's. Seatle Computer Products was also shipping boards with their own QDOS developed internally by Tim Paterson. IBM would have known of both these operating systems since they were available in the computer hobbyist marketplace. It is believed IBM was negotiating for CP/M before it felt the need to seek out a second source for its operating system. It is unclear why IBM let Gates negotiate for QDOS instead of directly negotiating for the operating system. IBM offered CP/M along with Gates' version of QDOS (MS-DOS) with its initial PC's. IBM priced CP/M at $240 and MS-DOS at $40. It appears that IBM was willing to pay per unit sales royalties to both companies. It is believed that CP/M's higher price was based on Kildall's demand for much a higher unit royalty payment than Gates demanded. Gates became rich because IBM offered royalty payments instead of buying all rights to the software. IBM also produced a computer that could be made by third parties such as, Compaq, Dell, Gateway and many others, which allowed for increase MS-DOS sales and later increased Windows and Office sales. Kildall did not have the privileged background that Gates did. Easier and quicker negotiations at a lower unit price by Kildall with IBM would have prevented Gates' early PC operating system success. Even without IBM's use of MS-DOS, Gates may still have achieved his wealth since it was Windows and Word (and the Office suite) which were the products that may him very wealthy and not MS-DOS.
BillWG didn't care about dropping out of school and starting M$ as his old man made millions stealing from people pensions. It has been fashionable for wealthy tech types to embrace the lowly startup in a garage thing even if it is far from the truth. It is nice that Bill & Melinda Gate Foundation is helping people. Bill probably needs the write-off and maybe the whole "more evil than Satan himself" thing struck a nerve.
I can't believe nobody is stating the other obvious here: you shouldn't try to get rich by imitating Bill Gates because it's illegal.
You can see details of Digital Research losing out to MS/DOS here:
http://www.digitalresearch.biz...
and it is clear that DR had plenty of "opportunity".
If you live in that hole, you can recognise another special circumstance that involves an opportunity other than higher learning. Could be scamming aid agencies or becoming a warlord, or selling majic beans who the F knows. That's what makes it special.
Army Reserve Medic, deployed to Iraq, did her tour came home, went through all the hoops to become an entry-level licensed nurse, got stuck for 7 years as a cafeteria employee while they jerked her around about transferring to the nursing staff. Lost her cert (since she had no extra time while making ends meet to volunteer or work a part time job to keep her certification up.) Ended up quitting that job, moving in with family, finding another job that would pay for re-certification. Got recertified, had that place close down, then got part time work in that field, before getting a factory job that paid more to make ends meet.
She's got some problems, but nothing that should have kept her from being able to move up in her field of choice every few years other than living in a shitty region (which she won't leave because her family is there.)
From discussions I have had in the past, a lot of people are in similiar situations.
It really annoys you that we have an openly straight president, doesn't it? You heterophobe Nazi.
I knew Jack Sams, but don't have time to describe his version of the story, so this will have to do: Triumph of the Nerds, Part 2, which tells part of what happened (from a certain point of view): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiffgiRAYUI
And can you confirm that contrary to what most of the MS haters seem to believe, Sams didn't know about QDOS or Seattle Computer Products before he approached MS?
People seem to think that Sams was given marching orders from the CEO to buy DOS from Gates, as a favor to Gates's mother. Which is, of course, historically impossible.
Malcom Gladwell pointed this out in his book tipping point several years ago. Bill Joy of Sun fame and Steve Jobs were similarly situated and owe a great deal of their success to their starting position on the chess board.
I think you are thinking of "Outliers".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Your cite claims that the IBM-DR negotiations probably failed for "good old boy" reasons, which suggests that Gates' mom's involvement in charity with an IBM exec probably was important.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
That source is just more of the saymo speculation and zero evidence...
Which source was the one brought up by someone disagreeing with me. I like it when I can argue against someone based on their cites to some extent, but it doesn't teach me as much as well-reasoned opposition.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It doesn't matter who brought up the source, since it doesn't offer any evidence, it doesn't support yours or anyone else's point of view on the matter.