MOTIVATION [part 6]

SUCCESS STORY {Its Bill Gates}

In this success story, we are going to share Bill Gates biography, a prominent American entrepreneur, investor, philanthropist with a terrific career in a development of software for personal-computers. He is the co-founder of Microsoft Corporation, one of the most recognized brands in the computer industry; nearly every computer has at least one Microsoft product installed.

The life story of Bill Gates reminds an American dream. Due to the hard work, he has achieved not only the prosperity of the company, but also the title of one of the richest people on Earth.

Gates has been No. 1 for many years on the Bloomberg Billionaires List, but Carlos Slim Helu took No. 1 spot in 2010. And in May 2013, with a fortune of $72 billion Bill Gates became the richest man on the planet again and retook the world’s richest title from Carlos Slim. Bill Gates’ net worth was $79.3 billion as of April 09, 2015.

In June, 1975, Bill Gates creates a company for software development and names it Microsoft (the first version was Micro-Soft). Despite of the hard work of its employees, the company at first experienced some difficulties with distribution of any software products. The company did not have enough money to hire a good sales manager, so this function was performed by Bill Gates’ mother Mary Maxwell Gates.

Bill Gates and Paul Allen, 1975

Early next year, Gates and Allen found out that the income of the company has dropped to the lowest affordable point. Its main reason was so called ‘piracy’ – illegal copying of software and the use of it without permission of the creator. Many people simply copied the MS-Basic and handed it to someone else. Realizing this, Bill Gates was furious, especially because ‘piracy’ was depriving him from the well-earned income. In addition, these copies contained some mistakes which he wanted to reduce before the formal release of MS-Basic. Gates wrote an open letter in February 1976, which was published in a newsletter for Altair users. In response, the Gates Foundation has received 300 letters, but only a few of them contained a check.

Bill Gates was the very first to state the need in a protection of the software. His actions have made an incredible contribution to the gradual introduction of a thought that a computer program is a product of creativity and therefore must be protected in the same way as a musical composition or a literary work.