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| Bill Gates Net Worth 2021: Income, Career, Assets & Biography |
Have you ever wondered what makes Bill Gates net worth? Have questions like how much has Bill Gates invested to become a billionaire puzzled you? Well, we have been dealing with the same questions lately and have finally got to the answer as to what is the net worth of Bill Gates in 2021.
The Forbes 400 lists out the definition of net worth of Bill Gates based on their wealth, profiling and ranking and gives us a definite reason and number of the richest people of the world. Counted as one of the wealthiest people, it is often asked how it feels like to earn such colossal wealth. If you want a clear affluence of these billionaires, you should read further.
Not born with a silver spoon, about 90 percent of these billionaires have had humble beginnings and are known for their gradual growth transitioning from lucrative jobs to a business serving them riches. Even during the economic downturns, these billionaires have managed their money in the best way to be able to become a figure where common man’s discussion involves their net worth.
Super-glued to the headlines, the Bill Gates net worth is also determined by their source and philanthropy score. Mind you, the Bill Gates net worth is not increased by just running one business but by investing in many others along the way. For instance, in 2002, Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin (after Amazon), which is a human spaceflight startup that he had long expressed his interest in.
Who is Bill Gates?
William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate, software developer, investor, author, landowner and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft Corporation. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), president and chief software architect, while also being the largest individual shareholder until May 2014. He is considered one of the best known entrepreneurs of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s.
Gates was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. In 1975, he co-founded Microsoft with childhood friend Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It went on to become the world's largest personal computer software company. Gates led the company as chairman and CEO until stepping down as CEO in January 2000, but he remained chairman and became chief software architect. During the late 1990s, he had been criticized for his business tactics, which have been considered anti-competitive. This opinion has been upheld by numerous court rulings. In June 2006, Gates announced that he would be transitioning to a part-time role at Microsoft and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the private charitable foundation that he and his wife, Melinda Gates, established in 2000. He gradually transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie. He stepped down as chairman of Microsoft in February 2014 and assumed a new post as technology adviser to support the newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella. In March 2020, Gates left his board positions at Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway to focus on his philanthropic endeavors including climate change, global health and development, and education.
Since 1987, he has been included in the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people. From 1995 to 2017, he held the Forbes title of the richest person in the world all but four of those years. In October 2017, he was surpassed by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who had an estimated net worth of US$90.6 billion compared to Gates's net worth of US$89.9 billion at the time. As of January 2021, Gates had an estimated net worth of US$163 billion, making him the third-richest person in the world.
Later in his career and since leaving day-to-day operations at Microsoft in 2008, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors. He has given sizable amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, reported to be the world's largest private charity. In 2009, Gates and Warren Buffett founded The Giving Pledge, whereby they and other billionaires pledge to give at least half of their wealth to philanthropy
Bill Gates Net Worth Today / Real Time
Bill Gates Net Worth - $128.1B
- With his wife Melinda, Bill Gates chairs the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest private charitable foundation.
- In May 2020, the Gates Foundation said it would spend $300 million to fight the coronavirus pandemic, funding treatment, detection and vaccines.
- Gates has sold or given away much of his stake in Microsoft -- he owns just over 1% of shares -- and invested in a mix of stocks and other assets.
- In mid-March 2020, Gates stepped down as a board member of Microsoft, the software firm he founded with Paul Allen (d. 2018) in 1975.
- The foundation works to improve global health and to create equal opportunity for people around the globe.
- To date, Gates has donated $35.8 billion worth of Microsoft stock to the Gates Foundation.
Bill Gates Net Worth 2021 in Different Currencies
- Bill Gates Net Worth 2021 in Dollar: $128.1B
- Bill Gates Net Worth in Australian Dollar: 167.90 b Australian Dollar
- Bill Gates Net Worth 2021 in Indian Rupees: 9.393 Trillion INR
- Bill Gates Net Worth in Rands: 1.874 Trillion South African Rands
- Bill Gates Net Worth in Millions: $128.1B
- Bill Gates Net Worth in Billions: $128000 M
Bill Gates Net Worth Over the Last 5 Years
Bill Gates net worth and wealth has changed drastically over the last 5 years. We have accumulated the data of net worth of Bill Gates for the year 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 & 2021 below:
- Bill Gates Net Worth in 2021: $128.1B
- Bill Gates Net Worth in 2020: $98 B
- Bill Gates Net Worth in 2019: $106 B
- Bill Gates Net Worth in 2018: $90 B
- Bill Gates Net Worth in 2017: $86 B
Bill Gates Assets
Bill Gates House: Mr. Gates resides with his family in a lake facing house named Xanadu 2.0. The lavish and ultra- modern house is spread over 66000 sq feet, which includes the following Luxury amenities:
- 7 bedrooms
- 6 Kitchens
- 24 bathrooms
- 6 fireplaces
- A private library with an Oculus shape
- Luxurious steam room
- Lavish sauna
- A four-car attached garage
- Swimming pool Olympic sized
- 20-seater art deco theatre
- Trampoline room
This massive mansion with such luxurious facilities costed 7 years to be built for a total cost of 147.5 million USD.
Gates also owns 314 acres The Grand Bogue Caye, the largest island in the republic of Belize.
Mr. Bill Gates Car Collection, Collectibles and Hobbies:
Mr. Gates is an art lover, he has purchased:
- Lost on the Grand Banks,’ an oil painting by Winslow Homer for $36 million;
- ‘Polo Crowd’ by George Bellows for $28 million;
- ‘Room of Flowers’ by Frederick Childe Hassam for $20 million;
- ‘The Nursery’ by William Merritt Chase for $10 million;
- Andrew Wythe’s ‘Distant Thunder’ for $7 million; and
- The Codex Leicester book for $30.8 million.
Bill Gates has a massive car collection, some of his cars include:
- 1988 Porsche 959 Coupe:
- Customized Porsche 911 Carrera,
- The Porsche 930
Mr. Gates also owns a yacht “Serene”, 436-ft valued at 330 million USD.
Bill Gates Income / Investments
Microsoft
BASIC
Gates read the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics which demonstrated the Altair 8800, and he contacted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) to inform them that he and others were working on a BASIC interpreter for the platform.[52] 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 demonstration, and over the course of a few weeks they developed an Altair emulator that ran on a minicomputer, and then the BASIC interpreter. The demonstration was held at MITS's offices in Albuquerque, New Mexico; it was a success and resulted in a deal with MITS to distribute the interpreter as Altair BASIC. MITS hired Allen,[53] and Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard to work with him at MITS in November 1975. Allen named their partnership ""Micro-Soft"", a combination of ""microcomputer"" and ""software"", and their first office was in Albuquerque. The first employee Gates and Allen hired was their high school collaborator Ric Weiland.[53] They dropped the hyphen within a year and officially registered the trade name ""Microsoft"" with the Secretary of the State of New Mexico on November 26, 1976.[53]Gates never returned to Harvard to complete his studies.
Microsoft's Altair BASIC was popular with computer hobbyists, but Gates discovered that a pre-market copy had leaked out and was being widely copied and distributed. In February 1976, he wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists in the MITS newsletter in which he asserted that more than 90% of the users of Microsoft Altair BASIC had not paid Microsoft for it and the Altair ""hobby market"" was in danger of eliminating the incentive for any professional developers to produce, distribute, and maintain high-quality software.[54] 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.[53] The company moved from Albuquerque to Bellevue, Washington on January 1, 1979.[52]
Gates said he personally reviewed and often rewrote every line of code that the company produced in its first five years. As the company grew he transitioned into a manager role, then an executive.[55]
IBM partnership
IBM, the leading supplier of computer equipment to commercial enterprises at the time, approached Microsoft in July 1980 concerning software for its upcoming personal computer, the IBM PC.[56] IBM first proposed that Microsoft write the BASIC interpreter. IBM's representatives also mentioned that they needed an operating system, and Gates referred them to Digital Research (DRI), makers of the widely used CP/M operating system.[57] IBM's discussions with Digital Research went poorly, however, and they did not reach a licensing agreement. IBM representative Jack Sams mentioned the licensing difficulties during a subsequent meeting with Gates and asked if Microsoft could provide an operating system. A few weeks later, Gates and Allen proposed using 86-DOS, an operating system similar to CP/M, that Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products (SCP) had made for hardware similar to the PC.[58] Microsoft made a deal with SCP to be the exclusive licensing agent of 86-DOS, and later the full owner. Microsoft employed Paterson to adapt the operating system for the PC[59] and delivered it to IBM as PC DOS for a one-time fee of $50,000.[60]
The contract itself only earned Microsoft a relatively small fee. It was the prestige brought to Microsoft by IBM's adoption of their operating system that would be the origin of Microsoft's transformation from a small business to the leading software company in the world. Gates had not offered to transfer the copyright on the operating system to IBM because he believed that other personal computer makers would clone IBM's PC hardware.[60] They did, making the IBM-compatible PC, running DOS, a de facto standard. The sales of MS-DOS (the version of DOS sold to customers other than IBM) made Microsoft a major player in the industry.[61] The press quickly identified Microsoft as being very influential on the IBM PC. PC Magazine asked if Gates was ""the man behind the machine?"".[56]
Gates oversaw Microsoft's company restructuring on June 25, 1981, which re-incorporated the company in Washington state and made Gates the president and chairman of the board, with Paul Allen as vice president and vice chairman. In early 1983, Allen left the company after receiving a Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis, effectively ending the formal business partnership between Gates and Allen, which had been strained months prior due to a contentious dispute over Microsoft equity.[52][62] Later in the decade, Gates repaired his relationship with Allen and together the two donated millions to their childhood school Lakeside.[23] They remained friends until Allen's death in October 2018.[63]
Windows
Microsoft launched its first retail version of Microsoft Windows on November 20, 1985. In August of the following year, 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, the partnership deteriorated due to mounting creative differences.[64]
Management style
Gates had primary responsibility for Microsoft's product strategy from the company's founding in 1975 until 2006. He gained a reputation for being distant from others; an industry executive complained in 1981 that ""Gates is notorious for not being reachable by phone and for not returning phone calls."" An Atari executive recalled that 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"".
Gates met regularly with Microsoft's senior managers and program managers, and the managers described him as being verbally combative. He also berated them for perceived holes in their business strategies or proposals that placed the company's long-term interests at risk. He interrupted presentations with such comments as ""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 would then have to defend the proposal in detail until Gates was fully convinced. When subordinates appeared to be procrastinating, he was known to remark sarcastically, ""I'll do it over the weekend.""
During Microsoft's early years, Gates was an active software developer, particularly in the company's programming language products, but his primary role in most of the company's history was as a manager and executive. He has not officially been on a development team since working on the TRS-80 Model 100, but he wrote code that shipped with the company's products as late as 1989. Jerry Pournelle wrote in 1985 when Gates announced Microsoft Excel: ""Bill Gates likes the program, not because it's going to make him a lot of money (although I'm sure it will do that), but because it's a neat hack.""
On June 15, 2006, Gates announced that he would transition out of his role at Microsoft to dedicate more time to philanthropy. He divided his responsibilities between two successors when he placed Ray Ozzie in charge of management and Craig Mundie in charge of long-term product strategy.
Antitrust litigation
Gates approved of many decisions that led to antitrust litigation over Microsoft's business practices. In the 1998 United States v. Microsoft case, Gates gave deposition testimony that several journalists characterized as evasive. He argued with examiner David Boies over the contextual meaning of words such as ""compete"", ""concerned"", and ""we"". Later in the year, when portions of the videotaped deposition were played back in court, the judge was seen laughing and shaking his head. BusinessWeekreported:
Early rounds of his deposition show him offering obfuscatory answers and saying ""I don't recall"" so many times that even the presiding judge had to chuckle. Worse, many of the technology chief's denials and pleas of ignorance were directly refuted by prosecutors with snippets of e-mail that Gates both sent and received.[78]
Gates later said that he had simply resisted attempts by Boies to mischaracterize his words and actions. ""Did I fence with Boies? … I plead guilty… rudeness to Boies in the first degree.""[79] Despite Gates's denials, the judge ruled that Microsoft had committed monopolization, tying and blocking competition, each in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.[79]
Post-Microsoft
Since leaving day-to-day operations at Microsoft, Gates has continued his philanthropy and works on other projects.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Gates was the world's highest-earning billionaire in 2013, as his net worth increased by US$15.8 billion to US$78.5 billion. As of January 2014, 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 CEO Satya Nadella.[11][81]
Gates provided his perspective on a range of issues in a substantial interview that was published in the March 27, 2014 issue of Rolling Stone magazine. In the interview, Gates provided his perspective on 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 has expressed concern about the potential harms of superintelligence; in a Reddit ""ask me anything"", he stated that:
First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage it well. A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern. I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don't understand why some people are not concerned.[83][84][85][86]
In an interview that was held at the TED conference in March 2015, with Baidu's CEO, Robin Li, Gates said he would ""highly recommend"" Nick Bostrom's recent work, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. During the conference, Gates warned that the world was not prepared for the next pandemic, a situation that would come to pass in late 2019 when the COVID-19 pandemic began. In March 2018, Gates met at his home in Seattle with Mohammed bin Salman, the reformist crown prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia to discuss investment opportunities for Saudi Vision 2030.[89][90] In June 2019, Gates admitted that losing the mobile operating system race to Android was his biggest mistake. He stated that it was within their skill set of being the dominant player, but partially blames the antitrust litigation during the time. That same year, Gates became an Advisory Board Member of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum.
On March 13, 2020, Microsoft announced Gates would be leaving his board positions at Berkshire Hathaway and Microsoft to dedicate his efforts in philanthropic endeavors such as climate change, global health and development, and education.
Philanthropy
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Gates studied the work of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, and donated some of his Microsoft stock in 1994 to create the ""William H. Gates Foundation."" In 2000, Gates and his wife combined three family foundations and Gates donated stock valued at $5 billion 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 $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, through his foundation, also donated $20 million to Carnegie Mellon University for a new building to be named Gates Center for Computer Science which opened in 2009.
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 $28 billion to charity; the couple plan to eventually donate 95% of their wealth to charity.
The foundation is organized into five program areas: Global Development Division, Global Health Division, United States Division, and Global Policy & Advocacy Division. Among others, it supports a wide range of public health projects, granting aid to fight transmissible diseases such AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, as well as widespread vaccine programs to eradicate polio. It grants funds to learning institutes and libraries and supports scholarships at universities. The foundation established a water, sanitation and hygiene program to provide sustainable sanitation services in poor countries. Its agriculture division supports the International Rice Research Institute in developing Golden Rice, a genetically modified rice variant used to combat vitamin A deficiency. The goal of the foundation is to provide 120 million women and girls, in the poorest countries, with high-quality contraceptive information and services, with the longer-term goal of universal access to voluntary family planning. In 2007, the Los Angeles Times criticized the foundation for investing its assets in companies that have been accused of worsening poverty, pollution and pharmaceutical firms that do not sell to developing countries. Although the foundation announced a review of its investments to assess social responsibility, it was subsequently canceled and upheld its policy of investing for maximum return, while using voting rights to influence company practices.
Gates delivered his thoughts in a fireside chat moderated by journalist and news anchor Shereen Bhan virtually at the Singapore FinTech Festival on December 8, 2020 on the topic, “Building Infrastructure for Resilience: What the COVID-19 Response Can Teach Us About How to Scale Financial Inclusion”.
Governments are there to think ahead to bad things that might happen. In the case of (the Covid-19) pandemic, not enough was done. We can't forget that another pandemic will come and we'll need to invest in being ready in that, ......while not forgetting that we were not prepared and we're going to have to invest - just like having a fire department - some money in an intelligent way and actually simulate what might happen and make sure that we're ready for it.
Gates favours the normalization of Covid-19 masks. In a November 2020 interview he said: ""What are these, like, nudists? I mean, you know, we ask you to wear pants, and no American says, or very few Americans say, that that's, like, some terrible thing.""[109]
Personal donations
Melinda Gates suggested that people should emulate the philanthropic efforts of the Salwen family, who sold their home and gave away half of its value, as detailed in their book, 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, Bill and Melinda Gates and investor Warren Buffett each signed a commitment they called the ""Giving Pledge"", which 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 $20 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the construction of a computer laboratory named the ""William H. Gates Building"" that was designed by architect Frank 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 John A. Paulson 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 $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 and the Computer Systems Laboratory (CSL) of Stanford's Engineering department.
Since 2005, Gates and his foundation have taken an interest in solving global sanitation problems. For example, they announced the ""Reinvent the Toilet Challenge"", which has received considerable media interest. To raise awareness for the topic of sanitation and possible solutions, Gates drank water that was ""produced from human feces"" in 2014 – it was produced from a sewage sludge treatment process called the Omni Processor. In early 2015, he also appeared with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show and challenged him to see if he could taste the difference between this reclaimed water or bottled water.
In November 2017, Gates said he would give $50 million to the Dementia Discovery Fund, a venture capital fund that seeks treatment for Alzheimer's disease. He also pledged an additional $50 million to start-up ventures working in Alzheimer's research.[121] Bill and Melinda Gates have said that they intend to leave their three children $10 million each as their inheritance. With only $30 million kept in the family, they are expected to give away about 99.96% of their wealth.[122] On August 25, 2018, Gates distributed $600,000 through his foundation via UNICEF which is helping flood affected victims in Kerala, India.[123]
Charity sports events
On April 29, 2017, Gates partnered with Swiss tennis legend Roger Federer in playing in the Match for Africa 4, a noncompetitive tennis match at a sold-out Key Arena in Seattle. The event was in support of the Roger Federer Foundation's charity efforts in Africa.[124] Federer and Gates played against John Isner, the top-ranked American player for much of this decade, and Mike McCready, the lead guitarist for Pearl Jam. The pair won the match 6 games to 4. Overall, they raised $2 million for children in Africa.[125] The following year, Gates and Federer returned to play in the Match for Africa 5 on March 5, 2018, at San Jose's SAP Center. Their opponents were Jack Sock, one of the top American players and a grand slam winner in doubles, and Savannah Guthrie, a co-anchor for NBC's Today show. Gates and Federer recorded their second match victory together by a score of 6–3 and the event raised over $2.5 million.[126]
Work on Energy and Climate Change
Gates considers climate change and global access to energy to be critical, interrelated issues. He has urged governments and the private sector to invest in research and development to make clean, reliable energy cheaper. Gates envisions that a breakthrough innovation in sustainable energy technology could drive down both greenhouse gas emissions and poverty, and bring economic benefits by stabilizing energy prices. In 2011, he said:
If you gave me the choice between picking the next 10 presidents or ensuring that energy is environmentally friendly and a quarter as costly, I'd pick the energy thing.
In 2015, he wrote about the challenge of transitioning the world's energy system from one based primarily on fossil fuels to one based on sustainable energy sources. Global energy transitions have historically taken decades. He wrote, “I believe we can make this transition faster, both because the pace of innovation is accelerating, and because we have never had such an urgent reason to move from one source of energy to another.” This rapid transition, according to Gates, would depend on increased government funding for basic research and financially risky private-sector investment, to enable innovation in diverse areas such as nuclear energy, grid energy storage to facilitate greater use of solar and wind energy, and solar fuels.
Gates spearheaded two initiatives that he announced at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. One was Mission Innovation, in which 20 national governments pledged to double their spending on research and development for carbon-free energy over five years. Another initiative was Breakthrough Energy, a group of investors who agreed to fund high-risk startups in clean energy technologies. Gates, who had already invested $1 billion of his own money in innovative energy startups, committed a further $1 billion to Breakthrough Energy. In December 2020, he called for the U.S. federal government to create institutes for clean energy research, analogous to the National Institutes of Health.
Gates's views have been criticized as undermining strategies to aggressively deploy existing solar and wind energy technologies, which have also led to innovation and to plummeting costs. He has also been criticised for holding a large stake in Signature Aviation, a company that services emissions-intensive private jets. In 2019, he began to divest from fossil fuels. He does not expect divestment itself to have much practical impact, but says that if his efforts to provide alternatives were to fail, he would not want to personally benefit from an increase in fossil fuel stock prices. After publishing his book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, parts of the climate activist community criticized Gate's approach as technological solutionism.
Bill Gates Career
Gates was born in Seattle, Washington, on October 28, 1955. He is the son of William H. Gates Sr. (1925–2020) and Mary Maxwell Gates (1929–1994). His ancestry includes English, German, and Irish/Scots-Irish. His father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way of America. Gates's maternal grandfather was J. W. Maxwell, a national bank president. Gates has an older sister Kristi (Kristianne) and a younger sister Libby. He is the fourth of his name in his family but is known as William Gates III or ""Trey"" (i.e., three) because his father had the ""II"" suffix. The family lived in the Sand Point area of Seattle in a home that was damaged by a rare tornado when Gates was seven years old.
Early in his life, Gates observed that his parents wanted him to pursue a law career. When he was young, his family regularly attended a church of the Congregational Christian Churches, a Protestant Reformed denomination. Gates was small for his age and was bullied as a child. The family encouraged competition; one visitor reported that ""it didn't matter whether it was hearts or pickleball or swimming to the dock; there was always a reward for winning and there was always a penalty for losing"".
At 13, he enrolled in the private Lakeside prep school, where he wrote his first software program. When he was in the eighth grade, the Mothers' Club at the school used proceeds from Lakeside School's rummage sale to buy a Teletype Model 33ASR terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric (GE) computer for the students. Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC, and he was excused from math classes to pursue his interest. He wrote his first computer program on this machine, an implementation of tic-tac-toe that allowed users to play games against the computer. Gates was fascinated by the machine and how it would always execute software code perfectly. After the Mothers Club donation was exhausted, Gates and other students sought time on systems including DEC PDP minicomputers. One of these systems was a PDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation (CCC) which banned for the summer Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Gates's best friend and first business partner Kent Evans, after it caught them exploiting bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time.
The four students formed the Lakeside Programmers Club to make money.[23] At the end of the ban, they offered to find bugs in CCC's software in exchange for extra computer time. Rather than use the system remotely via Teletype, Gates went to CCC's offices and studied source code for various programs that ran on the system, including Fortran, Lisp, and machine language. The arrangement with CCC continued until 1970 when the company went out of business.
The following year, a Lakeside teacher enlisted Gates and Evans to automate the school's class-scheduling system, providing them computer time and royalties in return. The duo worked diligently in order to have the program ready for their senior year. Towards the end of their junior year, Evans was killed in a mountain climbing accident, which Gates has described as one of the saddest days of his life. Gates then turned to Allen who helped him finish the system for Lakeside.[23]
At 17, Gates formed a venture with Allen called Traf-O-Data to make traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor.[36] In 1972, he served as a congressional page in the House of Representatives.[37][38] He was a National Merit Scholar when he graduated from Lakeside School in 1973.[39] He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT) and enrolled at Harvard College in the autumn of 1973.[40][41] He chose a pre-law major but took mathematics and graduate level computer science courses.[42] While at Harvard, he met fellow student Steve Ballmer. Gates left Harvard after two years while Ballmer stayed and graduated magna cum laude. Years later, Ballmer succeeded Gates as Microsoft's CEO and maintained that position from 2000 until his resignation in 2014.[43][44]
Gates devised an algorithm for pancake sorting as a solution to one of a series of unsolved problems[45] presented in a combinatorics class by professor Harry Lewis. His solution held the record as the fastest version for over 30 years, and its successor is faster by only 2%.[45][46] His solution was formalized and published in collaboration with Harvard computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou.[47]
Gates remained in contact with Paul Allen and joined him at Honeywell during the summer of 1974.[48] In 1975, the MITS Altair 8800 was released based on the Intel 8080 CPU, and Gates and Allen saw the opportunity to start their own computer software company.[49] Gates dropped out of Harvard that same year. His parents were supportive of him after seeing how much he wanted to start his own company.[50] He explained his decision to leave Harvard: ""if things hadn't worked out, I could always go back to school. I was officially on leave.""
Interesting Facts About Bill Gates
- Bill's nickname as a child was ""Trey"" which was given to him by his grandmother.
- He scored a 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT.
- At first Microsoft had a hyphen in the name ""Micro-soft"". It was a combination of microcomputer and software.
- When Microsoft first started out, Gates would look at every line of code before a new software product shipped.
- In 2004, Gates predicted that email spam would be gone by 2006. He was wrong on that one!
- He was dubbed an honorary knight by Queen Elizabeth. He does not use the title ""Sir"" because he is not a citizen of the United Kingdom.
Conclusion
The more fascinating fact while reading about the net worth of these affluences is that now more women are part of the listing and in the past few years, they have grown by 46 per cent which is more than the percentage of males.
Now with the rising net worth of these guys, the only question grappling us is, “who is going to be the first trillionaire?” Well, the answer to this could be deduced based on the net worth of top billionaires like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk who have pretty impressive track records and could be based on taking the average percentage of yearly growth over the past five years and applying it to future years.
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