Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft: biography, net worth and organizations founded by one of the richest and most famous men in the world.
William Henry Gates III, or more simply Bill Gates , is an American entrepreneur and programmer but, above all, he is the founder of Microsoft Corporation , a world leader in the computer sector. Bill was born in Seattle on October 28, 1955 to William H. Gates II, a lawyer, and Mary Maxwell, a former professor at the University of Washington.
Since he was a child, Bill has had a passion for computers and everything related to technology. His first contact with a PC took place in 1968 at the Lakeside School, the private school in Seattle that he attended. It was love at first sight and from that moment on he would never part with PCs.
He spent his days in front of computers, often skipping school, together with his friend and classmate Paul Allen, and at just thirteen years old they created a program in BASIC language that allowed users to play tic-tac-toe.
In 1972, Bill and Paul founded their first company, Traf-O-Data , to market a computer capable of measuring road traffic.
Bill’s parents had planned for their son a career as a lawyer and Bill fulfilled their aspiration by enrolling in the prestigious Harvard Law School in 1973, but here too, as had already happened in high school, he devoted himself entirely to computer science and spent most of his time in the institute’s computer lab.
Gates , much to the chagrin of his parents, abandoned his studies to enter the world of computer business: on April 4, 1975, Bill and Paul Allen founded Microsoft . Bill was its head until his resignation in 2000, remaining its president and creating the position of chief software architect for himself .
Bill Gates: Marriage, Children, Organizations
In January 1994, Bill Gates married entrepreneur Melinda French, with whom he has three children : Jennifer Katharine, Rory John, and Phoebe Adele. The Gates family lives in a house on Lake Washington, in Medina.
After resigning from Microsoft, Bill decided to dedicate himself to charity and so in 2000, with his wife, he founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation : a private humanitarian organization that aims to fight certain diseases such as AIDS , especially in the Third World .
In 2008, Bill called for the beginning of a new era under the banner of “ creative capitalism ”, a name he himself coined to refer to a system of technological progress not only exploited to produce profit but also to bring development and well-being to the poorest countries in the world.
Bill Gates: Net Worth
Bill Gates ‘ name has been on the list of the richest people in the world according to Forbes magazine since 1987 : from 1995 to 2017, except for four years, he held the title of the richest person in the world with a net worth of $89.9 billion (October 2017). In 2017, he was surpassed by Bezos, the founder of Amazon, with a net worth of $90.6 billion. As of August 6, 2018, Gates is the second richest person in the world after Bezos .