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Bill Gate Method: Making 2021 Count
Bill Gates is many things to many people. To some he is an IT genius whose software has powered global business for over three decades. To others, he is the geek who conquered the world. His detractors see instead an icon of capitalist excess – a man who became the richest individual in the world before he was forty. Then, in the past few years and perhaps against expectations, Gates has been held up as the ultimate ‘do-gooder’, helping to redefine philanthropy for the modern age.
His is an extraordinary CV that reveals a man of great complexity. Born into a comfortable middle-class American family, it was soon evident that he was something of a prodigy when it came to computers. The first decades of his life were engaged in the insular business of writing code and developing his business empire. By the 1980s he had turned his company, Microsoft, into one of the most successful firms on the planet. He was one of the two great behemoths of the technological age, but where his great rival (and sometimes friend), Steve Jobs, brought an air of bohemian rebellion to the computer business, the bespectacled Gates came to be a figurehead of the staid but booming corporate America.
As a businessman, he garnered a reputation for ruthlessness. He not only knew how to develop a product for market, but he was great at selling it there, too. Indeed, some have accused him of being overly concerned with getting one over on his business rivals, accusations that led to years of litigation over the legitimacy of a few of Microsoft’s business practices. Such has been the dominance of Gates-originated software driving the world’s PCs that other developers have understandably felt there has been little room left for them. Gates in turn argued that Microsoft merely reaped the rewards for being great innovators.
Having started his business out of his bedroom, Gates found himself transformed from the plucky little guy that people liked to back to the head of a global empire that many had come to loathe. Once your personal wealth dwarfs the GDP of most of the world’s countries, it is difficult to cast yourself as a ‘man of the people’. Although hugely intelligent and articulate, Gates also lacks that natural charisma that won Jobs pop star-like popularity even as the billions rolled into his bank account.
By the mid-1990s, though, it was evident that Gates was changing. The nerdy techie guy who spent days and nights at a time refining computer software was entering middle age. He married and had kids and, crucially, turned away from his monitor to look out at the world. The injustices he saw shocked and appalled him. That your chances of a good education and even a decently long life are so intrinsically linked to the lottery of where you happen to be born came as a revelation.
Having spent the first few decades of his life capitalizing on his talents to make himself absurdly rich, he decided it was time to give something back. In a gradual process, he stepped away from the day-to-day running of Microsoft and put his energies instead into philanthropy. Nor did his wish to improve the world prove to be a passing fad. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which he established in 2000 with his wife, is now one of the richest charitable organizations in the world. Perhaps even more importantly, the way it operates is heavily influencing how the sector as a whole goes about its business.
Naturally, not everyone is a fan of the ways the foundation generates capital or how it
disperses it – Gates himself acknowledges that not all of its operations have achieved what he desired. But few argue that it hasn’t had an enormous impact, both within the USA and in the wider developing world. If, as many expect, polio is wiped out as a killer disease within the next few years, the Gates Foundation must be given a great deal of credit for its part in the fight.
His is an extraordinary CV that reveals a man of great complexity. Born into a comfortable middle-class American family, it was soon evident that he was something of a prodigy when it came to computers. The first decades of his life were engaged in the insular business of writing code and developing his business empire. By the 1980s he had turned his company, Microsoft, into one of the most successful firms on the planet. He was one of the two great behemoths of the technological age, but where his great rival (and sometimes friend), Steve Jobs, brought an air of bohemian rebellion to the computer business, the bespectacled Gates came to be a figurehead of the staid but booming corporate America.
As a businessman, he garnered a reputation for ruthlessness. He not only knew how to develop a product for market, but he was great at selling it there, too. Indeed, some have accused him of being overly concerned with getting one over on his business rivals, accusations that led to years of litigation over the legitimacy of a few of Microsoft’s business practices. Such has been the dominance of Gates-originated software driving the world’s PCs that other developers have understandably felt there has been little room left for them. Gates in turn argued that Microsoft merely reaped the rewards for being great innovators.
Having started his business out of his bedroom, Gates found himself transformed from the plucky little guy that people liked to back to the head of a global empire that many had come to loathe. Once your personal wealth dwarfs the GDP of most of the world’s countries, it is difficult to cast yourself as a ‘man of the people’. Although hugely intelligent and articulate, Gates also lacks that natural charisma that won Jobs pop star-like popularity even as the billions rolled into his bank account.
By the mid-1990s, though, it was evident that Gates was changing. The nerdy techie guy who spent days and nights at a time refining computer software was entering middle age. He married and had kids and, crucially, turned away from his monitor to look out at the world. The injustices he saw shocked and appalled him. That your chances of a good education and even a decently long life are so intrinsically linked to the lottery of where you happen to be born came as a revelation.
Having spent the first few decades of his life capitalizing on his talents to make himself absurdly rich, he decided it was time to give something back. In a gradual process, he stepped away from the day-to-day running of Microsoft and put his energies instead into philanthropy. Nor did his wish to improve the world prove to be a passing fad. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which he established in 2000 with his wife, is now one of the richest charitable organizations in the world. Perhaps even more importantly, the way it operates is heavily influencing how the sector as a whole goes about its business.
Naturally, not everyone is a fan of the ways the foundation generates capital or how it
disperses it – Gates himself acknowledges that not all of its operations have achieved what he desired. But few argue that it hasn’t had an enormous impact, both within the USA and in the wider developing world. If, as many expect, polio is wiped out as a killer disease within the next few years, the Gates Foundation must be given a great deal of credit for its part in the fight.
196 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 25, 2020
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