Overview
William Henry Gates III didn’t just ride the microcomputer wave of the 1970s—he built the surfboard. Teaming up with childhood friend Paul Allen, Gates launched Microsoft in April 1975, betting that software, not hardware, would become the scarce commodity of the personal-computing age. The wager paid off spectacularly: Microsoft’s 1986 IPO created 12,000 millionaires overnight and made Gates the world’s youngest billionaire in 1987 at age 31. Between 1995 and 2017 he topped the Forbes global wealth list 18 times, becoming the first person to cross the $100-billion threshold in 1999. Today his net worth hovers around $115.1 billion (May 2025), yet the second act of his life—fighting malaria, polio, and climate change through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—may ultimately eclipse his software legacy.
Background & Origins
Born October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington, Gates grew up in a house teeming with competitive intellect: his father was a prominent attorney, his mother a banker and United Way executive. A precocious student, he wrote his first computer program—a tic-tac-toe game—at 13 on a Teletype Model 33 connected to a GE time-share system at Lakeside School. By high school Gates and friend Paul Allen were debugging software for local companies and hacking systems to steal extra computer time. Accepted at Harvard in 1973, he spent more nights in the university’s Aiken Computer Center than in class, eventually dropping out in 1975 to chase the nascent microcomputer market.
Major Achievements & Milestones
Co-founding Microsoft (1975): Gates and Allen licensed Altair BASIC to MITS for $3,000 plus royalties, then spent the next decade negotiating landmark deals that positioned Microsoft as the go-to software supplier for IBM-compatible PCs.
MS-DOS coup (1981): Retaining the right to license MS-DOS to other manufacturers, Gates turned a one-time IBM contract into a perpetual royalty machine that powered 90 % of the world’s PCs by 1991.
Windows 3.0 launch (May 22, 1990): Selling 100,000 copies in two weeks, Windows became the graphical shell that mainstreamed the PC and cemented Microsoft’s dominance.
Becoming the world’s youngest billionaire (1987): After Microsoft’s March 13, 1986, IPO at $21 a share, Gates’s 45 % stake vaulted him onto Forbes’s rich list at age 31.
Centibillionaire milestone (1999): Net worth briefly topped $101 billion amid the dot-com boom, making Gates the first person to exceed twelve figures in nominal dollars.
Creating the Gates Foundation (2000): Merging two earlier family foundations, Gates seeded what would become the world’s largest private charity, with a current endowment above $70 billion.
Timeline
- 1975: Drops out of Harvard; Microsoft incorporated in Albuquerque, NM, on April 4.
- 1980: Signs pivotal contract with IBM to provide an operating system; buys QDOS for $50,000, re-brands it MS-DOS.
- 1986: Microsoft goes public at $21/share; Gates instantly worth $234 million.
- 1995: Releases Windows 95, selling 7 million copies in the first six weeks.
- 2000: Steps down as CEO; becomes chief software architect and full-time philanthropist.
- 2008: Leaves daily role at Microsoft to focus on global health and education via the Gates Foundation.
- 2021: Divorce from Melinda French Gates after 27 years; remains co-chair of foundation.
Impact & Legacy
Gates’s insistence that software be licensed, not sold, transformed code into intellectual property and laid the groundwork for today’s $600-billion global software industry. Windows-powered PCs put computing within reach of billions, while Microsoft Office standardized productivity tools from spreadsheets to email. Yet his philanthropic pivot may prove even more transformative: the Gates-funded GAVI Alliance has vaccinated over one billion children, and the foundation’s $2.1-billion commitment to eradicate malaria has cut deaths 60 % since 2000. Critics decry Microsoft’s monopolistic tactics in the 1990s, but even they concede that Gates’s “creative capitalism” model—blending market incentives with social goals—has redefined 21st-century philanthropy.
Records & Notable Facts
- Held the Forbes #1 spot 13 consecutive years (1995-2007), longer than anyone else in the modern era.
- Donated more than $59 billion to charitable causes since 2000, the largest single fortune transfer in history.
- Owns 275,000 acres of U.S. farmland, making him the nation’s largest private farmland owner.
- Scored 1590 out of 1600 on the SAT, a credential he still brags about “only because there’s nothing else from high school worth bragging about.”
> “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” — Bill Gates, 1999
