Bill Gates Accomplishments

William Henry Gates III, more commonly known as Bill Gates, is an inventor, innovator, businessman, and philanthropist with a net-worth of nearly 80 billion dollars. However, he had to earn his success. He faced countless legal suits, competing corporations, and federal investigations. Through it all, he was able to build one of the largest corporations to date, Microsoft. Simply put, Bill Gates has earned his way to the top.

Born to an upper-middle class family in Seattle, Washington, Bill Gates was always encouraged by his family to be the best he could be in everything that he did. This seemed to be too true for Bill, and he soon became bored in school, finding everything to be too basic. When they saw this in their son, his parents enrolled

However, during this time he was contacted by his old friend, Paul Allen, who wanted to collaborate with Bill Gates on a new Operating System for the new Altair 8800 minicomputer kit. MITS, the owner of the hardware, was ecstatic to learn that someone wanted to develop for the Altair hardware. Gates immediately dropped out of Harvard, much to his parent’s dismay, and began to work with Allen on the system. Within two months, the boys created an operating system for hardware they had never even touched. Their prototype worked perfectly, and Microsoft was born. Bill and Paul soon realized that their operating system wasn’t bringing in enough revenue as expected, posing a challenge for a company whose survival depended on its sales. They soon learned that only 10% of consumers running the Altair Operating System actually payed for it, the other 90% received it from people who already had it. Bill Gates immediately wrote an open letter directed at computer enthusiasts, explaining to them that the copying of software meant to be sold “hindered innovation”, and would discourage developers from developing if they weren’t paid. This letter was very unpopular among those who valued computers, but eventually, with this letter and through other means, Bill Gates was able to convince consumers that paying for software was the way to

He and his wife started the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, a foundation dedicated to supporting education, world health, and investment in low-income families. They started out by making a 28 billion dollar donation to the foundation. Bill Gates stepped down from daily work at Microsoft, giving the job of CEO to his good friend Steve Ballmer. He became Chief Software Architect, but, in 2008, he decided to spend more time with his family and managing his charities. June 27 2008 was his last full day at