As of today, December 5, 2005...the market cap of Microsoft is about $300 billion. Bill Gates' share, 9.32%, is worth about $28 billion.
In a small way...in fact, maybe in a BIG WAY...Bill Gates can thank his mother for one of the initial connections that got him going.
Mary Gates passed away on June 10, 1994. She had been a tireless community-service advocate and one of Seattle's most prominent civic figures. In 1975, the year that her son co-founded Microsoft, Mrs. Gates became the first woman president of United Way of King County.
In 1980, IBM launched its top-secret program, Project Chess, to develop its own PC. It need an operating system. IBM sent a team to Redmond, Washington to help on Project Chess. After two meetings held under promises of confidentiality, IBM offered a hardware and software consulting deal to the the fledgling company. IBM wanted the rights to a desktop operating system for a small sum. Bill Gates was willing to oblige...on condition that he be given rights to sell copies to other computer makers for whatever the traffic would bear.
Why did IBM even go to Redmond, WA in the first place? At the time, IBM president John Opel served on United Way's national board...as did Mrs. Gates. In 1980, when someone mentioned Microsoft to John Opel, he responded, "Oh, that's run by Bill Gates, Mary Gates' son." Behind the scenes, Mary Gates had spoken with John Opel about the new breed of small companies in the computer industry, which she felt were under-appreciated competitors of the larger firms with which IBM traditionally partnered.
It is interesting to note that Bill Gates, and his Microsoft colleagues, were not the pioneers of the first operating system for personal computers. Nearly ten years before Bill Gates signed the epochal deal with IBM, Gary Kildall, a computer science professor had developed his own system...the Control Program for Microcomputers.
Kildall and Gates had known each other from their years...freely sharing ideas in the Home Brew Computer Club, a group that Kildall had founded. Why IBM connected with Bill Gates, and not Kildall, is not widely known. However, one can speculate that Mary Gates' connection to IBM's John Opel played an important, if not critical, role.
Thanks mom!
Nice post,
I agree that Bill owes all of his succes up to his mother... or at least he would have taken a little longer to get succesful... but lets face it... windowss is the best and has been for a very long time...
Thanks for writing, most people don't bother.
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