Bill Gates
Left Harvard to sell a BASIC interpreter; a 1980 IBM licensing deal set Microsoft's course.
- Born
- 1955 · Seattle, Washington, US
- Roots
- White American; English, German, and Scots-Irish descent
- Family
- Affluent
- Prominent Seattle family — attorney father; mother served on corporate and national nonprofit boards.
- Education
- Lakeside School → Harvard (dropped out)
- Started with
- Terminal time
- His school bought mainframe access when he was 13 — rare for the era; Microsoft itself was funded from early contract revenue.
- Affiliations & societies
- None documented.
- Information only — claims like these are often unverifiable and may be wrong.
The pathway
- 1968 · age 13Computer access at Lakeside
His school buys terminal time on a mainframe — rare for the era.
- 1975 · age 19Founds Micro-Soft
Leaves Harvard; sells a BASIC interpreter for the Altair with Paul Allen.
- 1980 · age 24IBM contract$75K
Buys 86-DOS for ~$75K and licenses it to IBM while keeping the right to sell it to other manufacturers. His mother knew IBM's chairman through the United Way national board.
- 1986 · age 30IPO
Microsoft lists on the NASDAQ.
- 1987 · age 31Billionaire status$1.25B
Per Forbes, the youngest at the time.
- 1995 · age 39Ranked world's richest person
Holds the Forbes top spot for most of the following two decades.
- 2000 · age 44Gates Foundation
Steps back from Microsoft's day-to-day over the following years.
Sources
Compiled from these references and contemporaneous press reporting. Figures are approximate; verify before relying on them.