What I learned from rereading Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best and listen to episode 292 The Business of Gaming with Mitch Lasky and 293 David Senra Passion and Pain !----Gates read the encyclopedia from beginning to end when he was only seven or eight years old.Gates had an obsessive personality and a compulsive need to be the best.Everything Bill did, he did to the max. What he did always went well, well beyond everyone else.You want to maneuver yourself into doing something in which you have an intense interest. —  Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger.Gates devoured everything he could get his hands on concerning computers and how to communicate with them, often teaching himself as he went.A young man with no money and tons of enthusiasm. — The Dream of Solomeo: My Life and the Idea of Humanistic Capitalism by Brunello Cucinelli. (Founders #289)He consumed biographies to understand how the great figures of history thought.The idea that some people were super successful was interesting. What did they know? What did they do? What drove those kinds of successes?Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft by Paul Allen. (Founders #44)“I’m going to make my first million by the time I'm 25.” It was not said as a boast, or even a prediction. He talked about the future as if his success was predestined.Gates and Allen were convinced the computer industry was about to reach critical mass, and when it exploded it would usher in a technological revolution of astounding magnitude. They were on the threshold of one of those moments when history held its breath... and jumped, as it had done with the development of the car and the airplane. They could either lead the revolution or be swept along by it.Bill had a monomaniacal quality. He would focus on something and really stick with it. He had a determination to master whatever it was he was doing. Bill was deciding where he was going to put his energy and to hell with what anyone else thought.Don’t do anything that someone else can do. — Edwin LandYou've got to remember that in those days, the idea that you could own a computer, your own computer, was about as wild as the idea today of owning your own nuclear submarine. It was beyond comprehension.There would be no unnecessary overhead or extravagant spending habits with Microsoft.“Pertec kept telling me I was being unreasonable and they could deal with this guy [Gates]. It was like Roosevelt telling Churchill that he could deal with Stalin.Four years in and Microsoft had only 11 employees.Gates sustained Microsoft through tireless salesmanship. For several years he alone made the cold calls and haggled, cajoled, browbeat, and harangued the hardware makers of the emerging personal computer industry, convincing them to buy Microsoft's services and products. He was the best kind of salesman there is: he knew the product, and he believed in it. Moreover, he approached every client with the zealotry of a true believer.When we got up to 30 employees, it was still just me, a secretary, and 28 programmers. I wrote all the checks, answered the mail, took the phone calls.This might be Bill’s most important decision ever: IBM had talked to Gates about a fixed price for an unlimited number of copies of the software Microsoft licensed to IBM. The longer Gates thought about this proposal the more he became convinced it was bad business. Gates had decided to insist on a royalty arrangement with IBM.You have to be uncompromised in your level of commitment to whatever you are doing, or it can disappear as fast as it appeared. Look around, just about any person or entity achieving at a high level has the same focus. The morning after Tiger Woods rallied to beat Phil Mickelson at the Ford Championship in 2005, he was in the gym by 6:30 to work out. No lights. No cameras. No glitz or glamour. Uncompromised. — Driven From Within by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil. (Founders #213)Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace by James Wallace. (Founders #174)You can drive great people by making the speed of decision making really slow. Why would great people stay in an organization where they can't get things done? They look around after a while, and they're, like, "Look, I love the mission, but I can't get my job done because our speed of decision making is too slow."—Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos (Founders #155)Alexander the Great: The Brief Life and Towering Exploits of History's Greatest Conqueror--As Told By His Original Biographers by Arrian, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius Rufus. (Founders #232)Gates was intolerant of distractions.----Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Insights from tech giants like Steve Jobs on the importance of quality, outthinking competitors, and finding your passion. Explore the entrepreneurial journeys of Michael Dell and Bill Gates, emphasizing customer focus and continuous improvement. Discover leadership philosophies and marketing insights from industry leaders like Andy Grove and Apple.

What I learned from reading Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. ----Come see a live show with me and Patrick O'Shaughnessy from Invest Like The Best on October 19th in New York City. Get your tickets here! ----Subscribe to listen to Founders Premium — Subscribers can listen to Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes and every bonus episode. ---Microsoft had become the first software company to sell more than a billion dollars worth of software in a single year. Gates was the undisputed mastermind of that success, a brilliant technocrat, ruthless salesman, and manipulative businessman. Gates had slammed his fist into his palm and vowed to put several of his major software competitors out of business. By 1991, many of those competitors were in full retreat. I can do anything I put my mind to. Aggressive and stimulated by conflict; prone to change mood quickly; a dominating personality with outstanding powers of leadership. Mary Gates, in describing her son, has said that he has pretty much done what he wanted since the age of eight. Even as a child Gates had an obsessive personality and a compulsive need to be the best. Everything Bill did, he did to the max. Everything he did, he did competitively and not simply to relax. He was a very driven individual. Gates was immediately hooked. He found he had to compete for time on the computer with a handful of others who were similarly drawn to the room as if by a powerful gravitational force. Among them was Paul Allen. Gates devoured everything he could get his hands on concerning computers and how to communicate with them, often teaching himself as he went. Gates and a couple of other boys broke into the PDP-10 security system and obtained access to the company’s accounting files. They found their personal accounts and substantially reduced the amount of time the computer showed they had used. “It was when we got that free time that we really got into computers,” Gates said. “Then I became hardcore. It was day and night.” Gates was 13 years old. Although he was only in the ninth grade, he already seemed obsessed with the computer, ignoring everything else, staying out all night. He consumed biographies to understand how the great figures in history thought. If you had asked anybody at Lakeside, ‘Who is the real genius among geniuses?’ everyone would have said ‘Bill Gates.’He was obnoxious, he was sure of himself, he was aggressively, intimidatingly smart. He had a hard-nosed, confrontational style. His intensity at times boiled over into raw, unthrottled emotion. To those who knew him best Gates was hardly the social outcast he may have appeared to be from a distance. He had a sense of humor and adventure. He was a risk taker, a guy who liked to have fun and who was fun to be with. He had an immense range of knowledge and interests and could talk at length on any number of subjects. Although Gates may not have known what he was going to do with his life, he seemed confident that whatever he did would make him a lot of money. He made such a prediction about his future on several occasions. He and Paul Allen began to talk about forming their own software company. They shared the same vision that one day the computer would be as commonplace in the home as a television set and that these computers would need software—their software. Bill Gates would later tell a friend he went to Harvard to learn from people smarter than he was and left disappointed. That Gates would fall asleep in class was not surprising. He was living on the edge. It was not unusual for him to go as long as three days without sleep. His habit was to do 36 hours or more at a stretch, collapse for ten hours, then go out, get a pizza, and go back at it. And if that meant he was starting again at three o’clock in the morning, so be it. Gates and Allen were convinced the computer industry was about to reach critical mass, and when it exploded it would usher in a technological revolution of astounding magnitude. They were on the threshold of one of those moments when history held its breath and jumped, as it had done with the development of the car and the airplane. They could either lead the revolution or be swept along by it. Gates spent many hours sitting in his room “being a philosophical depressed guy, trying to figure out what I was doing with my life.”Bill had a monomanical quality. He would really focus on something and stick with it. He had a determination to master whatever it was he was doing. Bill was deciding where he was going to put his energy and to hell with what anyone else thought. Gates eventually gave up any thought of becomming a mathematician. If he couldn’t be the best in his field, why risk failure? Gates knew Allen was right. It was time. The personal computer miracle was going to happen.The personal computer revolution had begun. Its prophets were two young men not yet old enough to drink, whose software would soon bring executives in suits from around the country to a highway desert town to make million-dollar deals with kids in blue jeans and t-shirts. You’ve got to remember that in those days, the idea that you could own a computer, your own computer, was about as wild as the idea today of owning your own nuclear submarine. It was beyond comprehension. His parents and grandparents had taught him to be financially conservative, and that was the way he intended to run his company. There would be no unnecessary overhead or extravagant spending habits with Microsoft. Bill always had the vision that Microsoft’s mission was to provide all the software for microcomputers. They became known as the Microkids—high-IQ insomniacs who wanted to join the personal computer crusade, kids with a passion for computers who would drive themselves to the limits of their ability and endurance. Gates’ tireless salesmanship, browbeating, and haggling had resulted in agreements to license BASIC to a number of computer companies. He took one look at the long-haired, scraggly, 21-year-old and decided the legal battle against Microsoft was going to be easy. Roberts had warned Pertec that it would have its hands full with Gates, but no one listened to him. “Pertec kept telling me I was being unreasonable and they could deal with this guy,” Roberts said. “It was a little like Roosevelt telling Churchill that he could deal with Stalin.” What sustained the company was not Gates’ ability to write programs. Gates sustained Microsoft through tireless salesmanship. For several years, he alone made the cold calls and haggled, cajoled, browbeat, and harangued the hardware makers, convincing them to buy Microsoft’s services and products. When we got up to 30 employees, it was still just me, a secretary, and 28 programmers. I wrote all the checks, answered the mail, and took the phone calls. I’ll tell you or anybody else, that by the time you were with Bill for fifteen minutes, you no longer thought about how old he was or what he looked like. He had the most brilliant mind that I had ever dealt with. Microsoft did not need venture capital; Gates was essentially hiring the firm’s expertise. Gates wanted to eliminate his opponents from the playing field. Bill learned early on that killing the competition is the name of the game. There just aren’t as many people later to take you on. In game theory, you improve the probability you are going to win if you have fewer competitors. If you talk to Bill about any software company there’s a very high probability that he will be able to tell you who the CEO is, what their revenues were last year, what they are currently working on, what the problems are with their products. He’s very knowledgeable and prides himself on knowing what’s going on in the industry. Hanson suggested a different product naming strategy. It was important for a product to be identified by its brand name. Microsoft had to get its name associated with its products.The brand is the hero. People start to associate certain images with the brand, and that becomes more important than any single product. What the consumer goods companies realized years ago was that products come and go. But if you can create a halo around a brand name, when you introduce new products under that brand halo it becomes much easier to create momentum. With few exceptions, they’ve never shipped a good product in its first version. But they never give up and eventually get it right. It was all part of Gates’ master plan. As General George S. Patton liked to say, a good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week. He was a very clear thinker. But he would get emotional. He would browbeat people. Just imposing your intellectual prowess on somebody doesn’t win the battle, and he didn’t know that. He was very rich and very immature. He had never matured emotionally. For the year that ended June 30, 1985, Microsoft had revenues of $140 million. Its profits had totaled $31.2 million. All I’m thinking and dreaming about is selling software, not stock. The combination of ambition and wanting to win every single day is what Gates referred to as “being hardcore.”—“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Bill Gates, Co-founder of Microsoft and one of the world's foremost philanthropists, joins Trevor Noah to discuss his teenage scheming for computer time, the future dangers of AI, being at the center of conspiracy theories, his love of pickleball, and more.

Learn about Bill Gates' ruthless approach to business, his focus on acquiring everything he can, and his disregard for fairness. Discover the shift in strategies needed for success in the tech industry, as well as the importance of finding value in unexpected places. Explore Gates' competitive nature, missed opportunities in the tech landscape, and reflections on his strategic vision and determination.

How did Bill Gates scale BOTH a global business and a global philanthropy? He spotted an inflection point in history — and accelerated it. What does that take? A great idea, great timing, and also: Great partners. Because even Bill Gates doesn’t go it alone. In Part 1 of this special two-part episode, Bill reflects with Reid on the founding and growth of Microsoft — how he not only spotted an inflection point (hello, personal computers) but accelerated it to massive scale (forget computers, let's talk platforms). There’s timeless wisdom in Bill’s ability to identify inflection points, build strategic partnerships, and just work harder than everyone else. In Part 2, Bill reflects on scaling the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the different lessons learned between the two.Read a transcript of this interview: https://mastersofscale.comSubscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Bill Gates, Co-founder of Microsoft and renowned philanthropist, shares his insights on climate change, global health, and education. He discusses how AI will revolutionize these areas, with a focus on its potential to save lives and tackle malnutrition. Gates highlights innovative energy solutions like nuclear fusion and the vital role of technology in addressing food security. His optimism shines through as he outlines the promise of AI in education and healthcare, emphasizing humanity's capacity for positive change.

Bill Gates and tech experts discuss the future of AI, its impact on healthcare, education, and business. They explore AI's potential to cure diseases, enhance creativity, and usher in abundance. Topics include AI risks, advancements, and the need for effective regulation.

Bill Gates, a titan in technology and philanthropy, joins energy scholars Vaclav Smil and David MacKay to dissect the current landscape of energy transition. They tackle Gates's reliance on Smil's theories and scrutinize past ideas around renewable energy. Critiques emerge about the limitations of fossil fuel perspectives and industry biases. A heated discussion unfolds on the efficacy of energy innovations and the need for renewed foundational concepts in sustainable practices. The clash of theories and investments hints at broader implications for future energy landscapes.

What will come after AI? Is net zero in 2050 a realistic goal? And what does Bill Gates read? We will cover all this and much more in this special bonus episode! The production team on this episode were PLAN-B’s Nikolai Ovenberg and Niklas Figenschau Johansen. Background research was done by Sigurd Brekke.Links:Watch the episode on YouTube: Norges Bank Investment Management - YouTubeWant to learn more about the fund? The fund | Norges Bank Investment Management (nbim.no)Follow Nicolai Tangen on LinkedIn: Nicolai Tangen | LinkedInFollow NBIM on LinkedIn: Norges Bank Investment Management: Administrator for bedriftsside | LinkedInFollow NBIM on Instagram: Explore Norges Bank Investment Management on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.