Bill Gates

Hi. My name is Bill Gates. I am an American business magnate, philanthropist, investor,

computer programmer, and inventor. I originally established my reputation as the co-founder
of Microsoft, the worlds largest PC software company, with Paul Allen. During my career at
Microsoft, I held the positions of chairman, CEO and chief software architect, and was also
the largest individual shareholder until May 2014. I has also authored and co-authored
several books.
Today I am consistently ranked in the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people and was
the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2014excluding a few brief periods post-2008. Between
2009 and 2014 my wealth more than doubled from $40 billion to more than $82 billion.
Between 2013 and 2014 my wealth increased by $15 billion, or around $1.5 billion more
than the entire GDP of Iceland in 2014. I am currently the richest man in the world.
I am one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. I have been
criticized for my business tactics, which have been considered anti-competitive, an opinion
which has in some cases been upheld by numerous court rulings. In the later stages of my
career, I have pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of
money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.
I stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in January 2000. I remained as
chairman and created the position of chief software architect for myself. In June 2006, I
announced that I would be transitioning from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time work,
and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. I gradually transferred my duties
to Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, and Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy
officer. My last full-time day at Microsoft was June 27, 2008. I stepped down as chairman of
Microsoft in February 2014, taking on a new post as technology advisor to support newly
appointed CEO Satya Nadella.
Early life
Gates was born in Seattle, Washington, in an upper-middle-class family, the son of William
H. Gates, Sr. and Mary Maxwell Gates. my ancestral origin includes English, German, and
Scots-Irish. my father was a prominent lawyer, and my mother served on the board of
directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way. Gates's maternal grandfather
was JW Maxwell, a national bank president. Gates has one elder sister, Kristi, and one
younger sister, Libby.I was the fourth of my name in my family, but was known as William
Gates III or "Trey" because my father had the "II" suffix. Early on in my life, my parents had
a law career in mind for him. When Gates was young, my family regularly attended a
Protestant Congregational church. The family encouraged competition; one visitor reported
that "it didn't matter whether it was hearts or pickleball or swimming to the dock ... there was
always a reward for winning and there was always a penalty for losing".
At 13,i enrolled in the Lakeside School, an exclusive preparatory school. When i was in the
eighth grade, the Mothers Club at the school used proceeds from Lakeside School's
rummage sale to buy a Teletype Model 33 ASR terminal and a block of computer time on a
General Electric computer for the school's students. Gates took an interest in programming
the GE system in BASIC, and was excused from math classes to pursue my interest.i wrote
my first computer program on this machine: an implementation of tic-tac-toe that allowed
users to play games against the computer. But today, I am still inventing top-of-the-line
equipment inside of my Company.