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Founders: #140 Bill Gates (the Making of the Microsoft Empire)

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What I learned from reading Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. ---- 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 roo

[00:00:00] At age 36, Bill Gates has become the most powerful and feared player in the computer industry, and in the process, the richest man in America. Revenues of his Microsoft corporation topped out at $1.8 billion in 1991. His operating system has become the standard in computing operating systems, and his software dominates much of the industry. Now worth over $7 billion, Chairman Bill has revolutionized the software business. Hailed as a computer genius and a brilliant entrepreneur by some, and a bully by others, Gates' aggressive management style and fiery spirit can intimidate…

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