Billionaire Bill Gates - Titan of Tech

I have always found it interesting concerning the love/hate relationship Bill Gates has with the general public, as he has committed to use his enormous wealth to help people around the world, specifically in world health, education, and investing in low-income communities.

It appears to me it has to do more with the general way he communicates and markets, rather than any perceived evil some attach to him.

For example, in regard to the products he helped develop, the return for investors in the company, and as mentioned, the plowing of billions into helping make things better around the world, he is unparalleled among the wealthy.

The strength of Bill Gates has been his understanding of value of software in an array of products, as well as being a very astute businessman; something many people don't know or appreciated about him.

Either way, history will remember Bill Gates as being one of the most influential men of the 20th and 21st centuries. The 20th century for building Microsoft and helping to launch the personal computer revolution, and the 21st century for his philanthropy, a narrative that is still being told.

Bill Gates was always interested and curious about things, and loved to read when he was young. He was bored with the low level public school system, and was eventually placed in a private school by his parents, where he thrived.

Unsurprisingly, he did very well, particularly in science and math.

At the ripe old age of 15, the legendary partnership with Paul Allen was launched, where the two first developed "Traf-o-Data," which was used in Seattle to track patterns of traffic. They generated about $20,000 in revenue from the deal, although they had yet to officially launch a business.

Gates was under pressure from his parents to finish high school and go to college, so it took a little longer before starting what would become Microsoft.

It appears Gates never really had a lot of interest in college, as he never really hit the books, but rather engaged in the practice of cramming for a test, although he always passed with at least a decent grade.

He enrolled at Harvard after posting an SAT score of 1590 out of 1600.

Under the influence of his parents, in the beginning he was thinking of going into law as a profession.

Where things really took off for Gates and Allen was in relationship to developing software for MITS. The duo used the computer lab at Harvard to write the software.

Even though they didn't even get an opportunity to try it out on the Altair computer they developed it for, the software worked without a hitch.

Paul Allen got hired by MITS and Gates followed, dropping out of Harvard.

After initial success, Gates and Allen finally officially launched a partnership under the name of Micro-Soft, with a hyphen, named after what they identified as a "micro-computer" and "software." Eventually the removed the hyphen and used the name Microsoft.

The company was started in 1975. In 1978 the headquarters of the company was moved to Bellevue, Washington.

Interestingly, when Gates was marketing the company in the early days, his mother played a significant role, as she was on the boards of several companies, creating legitimacy for the young Gates, who in his early days, looked even younger than he really was.

This was especially helpful, as the, at the time, powerful computer company IBM was one of those companies she sat on the board of. That opened the door wide open for Gates and Microsoft. His mother introduced Gates to the CEO of IBM.

At the time, IBM had been searching for software that would be able to work with their upcoming release of a personal computer, and asked Gates whether or not Microsoft could provide it for them.

In a gutsy move, Gates assured IBM the company could do it, even though the company had absolutely nothing that would run the IBM computer under development.

Gates decided to become the exclusive licensing agent for an operating system that would run on the type of computers IBM was developing, and ended up tweaking the software to work with the personal computers. Ultimately he acquired the software outright.

IBM paid $50,000 for the new software, with Gates brilliantly negotiating a licensing fee for every piece of software sold on an individual PC. The software was called MS-DOS.

This was prescient on Gates part because he knew there would be other companies developing personal computers similar to IBM which would need software to run them.

Gates was able then to license the software to each individual company, the foundation of the wildly successful software company and Gates himself.

At this stage the growth of Microsoft was exponential, with approximately 30 percent of the computers around the world using the company's software.

Paul Allen, at this time (1983), stepped down from the company after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease.

To this day uncertainty surrounds the departure of Allen from Microsoft, with some asserting Allen was pushed out by Gates. Others say it was the effects of the disease on Allen which changed his perspective on life.

In another bold move, while working with others to develop a graphic interface for less sophisticated computer users, Gates realized the enormous threat to MS-DOS, and announced Microsoft was in the midst of developing its own operating system using a graphic user interface, even though there was literally no such development the company was engaged in at the time.

The name of the new graphic interface, Gates said, would be called "Windows."

What this did was keep MS-DOS users from abandoning Microsoft software and going to its competitors. Close to 30 percent of those market decided to wait for the release of the new, promised software. The competition dropped out when they saw people weren't changing to the chief competitive system: Visiscorp.

The announcement had been made in 1983, and in the latter part of 1985, Microsoft released its first version of Windows.

Just a year later, Gates decided to take Microsoft public with an IPO valued at $21 a share.

Of the available 27.4 million shares offered by the company, Gates held 45 percent of them, making him an immediate millionaire, generating an instant $520 million for the company, with his holdings valued at $234 million.

As the stock continued to rise in price, Gates became a billionaire in 1986.

Since that time, Gates eventually became the richest man in the world, occasionally being beaten out by Warren Buffett during that time, or in the recent future, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, who, as of 2012, remains the richest man in the world.

At one time the value of Microsoft brought Gates' net worth to over $100 billion.

Most of us know about the management style of major Gates competitor Steve Jobs, who was ruthless to say the least, but Gates has been underrated in that regard, being extremely tough and demanding to his people as well, drawing out, in most cases, the best in them.

As with Jobs, Gates wanted to find out whether or not his people really believed in the ideas they were presenting, and challenged them vigorously to make them think everything through.

There is no doubt Gates was always extremely competitive. That and his personality generated some major opposition, resulting in a number of investigations of the company by the Justice Department and the Federal Trade commission in the 1990s.

Interestingly, Gates, sensing the need to change how he and the company were perceived, he relieved the tension by making some appearances as Mr. Spock from Star Trek at some trade shows, as well as having some humorous commercials made.

With his wife Melinda, Gates decided to give more of his attention and time to charitable giving.

Gates stepped down from running the company in 2000, after creating the William H. Gates Foundation in 1994. Eventually the name was changed to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, after merging several of the foundations the family had started.

The original contribution to the foundation by Gates was $28 billion. Fellow friend and billionaire Warren Buffett has also committed billions to the fund.

Since the middle of 2008 Gates hasn't worked a full day for Microsoft, instead focusing on the foundation.

Andrew Carnegie was one of the major role models of Bill Gates as it relates to giving back.