An innovative visionary, who changed the face of technology and started a computer revolution, Bill Gates is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the history of the world. He, along with Paul Allen built the multi-dollar Microsoft industry, making himself the richest man along the way. He ditched classes at school to create a computer program to measure traffic in Seattle, and later went to Harvard. While he spent most of his time playing poker and video games, in 1974, when in first read about Altair 8800, the first microprocessor, he and Allen called the President of manufacturer, and told him that they had written a version of the BASIC language for the Altair, which hadn’t. So, they worked day and night, wrote down the program, without a surety of the program actually working. But, it did. Gates dropped out of Harvard and moved with Allen to Albuquerque, where they officially established Microsoft.
Windows wasn’t exactly an immediate breakthrough, and the critics called it slow and cumbersome. But that did the stop Gates. His words are as inspiring as his life:
- On Success
“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.” - On the lessons of failure
“It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” - On the ultimate aim of every business- Customer Satisfaction
“In business, the idea of measuring what you are doing, picking the measurements that count, like customer satisfaction and performance … you thrive on that.” - On being unique
“Don’t compare yourself with anyone in this world … if you do so, you are insulting yourself.” - On spending time wisely
“Don’t make the same decision twice. Spend time and thought to make a solid decision the first time so that you don’t revisit the issue unnecessarily. If you’re too willing to reopen issues, it interferes not only with your execution but also with your motivation to make a decision in the first place. After all, why bother deciding an issue if it isn’t really decided?” - On not making the same mistakes again
“A bad strategy will fail no matter how good your information is, and lame execution will stymie a good strategy. If you do enough things poorly, you will go out of business.” - On takes carefully calculated risks
“Reward worthy failure–experimentation.” - On keeping a check at yourself
“Whether it’s Google or Apple or free software, we’ve got some fantastic competitors and it keeps us on our toes.” - On risks and business
“To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks.” - Well, customers are the only god
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”